Talk Vomit

By Bethany F. Brengan

How many more years
before you stop comparing yourself
to the other woman
poet: the one who drinks gin
and writes about old flames
and has a careless stain, like a brooch,
on the collar of her turtleneck
as she leans across the podium,
holding her third volume open between
two fingers in a way that suggests
she’s not quite done with smoking,
despite how much she knows about cancer?
She wears mascara and no lipstick
because she is hungry.

You want a string of messy affairs,
sometimes, just for the possibility
of sonnets. But the breeze
off the creek is the only one who
tickles you. Darling, even if you don’t believe,
it’s easy to see a divine thumbprint
on a buttercup petal. It takes an optimistic
imagination to keep finding God
in men. Too many have acted
as though your mouth
could create a quiet field

between their thoughts. When you look
at them, you see the hands
of their fathers, around their necks.
You want to lightly bless their shoulders
and cry: I can’t save you. The hope
that one of them might gift you peace died,
stillborn, in a back-to-school-sale
changing room while listening to mothers
list the tasks they needed to finish before
their husbands got home. No matter
who worked how many hours, these women
always went to bed last. You wish,
on the forms at your doctor’s office,
under sexuality, was an option for “tired.”

How middle school to want
to be both exceptional and relatable.
How long before you are able
to meet her eyes above the sink
as you both readjust your faces in a quiet
flanked by bells, and say, “That color
looks perfect on you”?