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It fills his mouth with fish smell so he is fishy when I near him. He changes his mind about coffee. We drink red wine in the kitchen, so soon I forget fishness, and touch his stomach. For an hour we taste in ways old lovers have of touching the other’s folds and places, and we make V’s and W’s with our legs, crooks of our elbows. Then he’s ready to go home and I’m OK with his leaving, for the sun, which had gloried the red brick flats across Broadway and the thousand windows, reflecting light, now fails, and the earth-glow brilliance fades to dusk. He knows he will cook alone in his kitchen where he lives apart. And I— I Give My Husband Fish Sausage PAGE DOUGHERTY DELANO 3 0 P A G E D O U G H E R T Y D E L A N O I’ve begun to chop carrots, stir garlic into the pan, get dressed. I have always loved this day. It lies midweek, but begins with W, toward the ragged close of the alphabet, two V’s clinging to each other. You say Wednesday by swallowing whole a small part, birds that fall from nests. *** These poems are born out of the unworkable last stage of a twenty-five-year marriage, a marriage which had been, in its time, rich and full, and whose dissolution was more or less mutual. But, obviously, it was not without its painful moments. We shared two wonderful children, years of exciting political involvement , common joys, economic ordeals, and the sweet and sour of weathering a relationship. The poems concentrate experiences in the years of breakage. If there are moments that aren’t entirely true, they could have been. I also try to touch on the celebratory aspects of having cut loose/having been cut loose from a relationship turned difficult, as well as to suggest the complexities of a long erotic life and a history of desire. The vocabulary problems that come in naming this liminal period are indicative of this new experience/ existential moment. ...

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