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Husbands and Wives 121 20 Mrs. Dumpty  Chana Bloch The last time the doctors gave up I put the pieces together and bought him a blue wool jacket, a shirt and a tie with scribbles of magenta, brown buckle shoes. I dressed him and sat him down with a hankie in his pocket folded into points. Then a shell knit slowly over his sad starched heart. He’d laugh and dangle his long legs and call out, What a fall that was! And I’d sing the refrain, What a fall! And now he’s at my door again, begging in that leaky voice, and I start wiping the smear from his broken face. Chana Bloch, “Mrs. Dumpty” and “Visiting Hours Are Over,” from Mrs. Dumpty. Winner of the 1998 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. Copyright © 1998 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Reprinted by permission of The University of Wisconsin Press. ...

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