The Fire Landscape: Poems

Girdles

Girdles Coming of age at the end of the girdle era, I’d touched nothing, on the way to pleasure, but cotton Or silk until one night, under a girl’s dress, I was Fumbling through a set of unfamiliar keys, cold wind Numbing my ungloved hands until I rubbed against her In anxiety and lust, shooting in a shudder Of shame upon that beige, impenetrable armor. I began to drive while she used four Kleenex she dropped Onto the floor of my father’s Chevrolet, leaving Them for me to remember or forget. I went back, The next morning, to my second semester, and she, By June, was engaged, so sudden and definitive That news from my mother, I uttered an Oh of loss. For sure, she was in the family way, my mother said, But all along she’d sung in the choir as if alto Were the voice of abstinence, her harmonies washing Past my mother’s shoulder until she began to show, And what did I think of that—hadn’t she been a friend? My answer? I turned away until the night after My mother died, opening her drawers like a husband, Guessing at, when I came to one girdle, the last time She’d worn it, whether before or after that choir girl Had packed hers away with training bras and petticoats. 69 P 1FINCKE_pages.qxd 5/21/08 9:31 AM Page 69 Twenty-seven years had passed since I’d touched one, and when I laid my hand on its strange surface, the bedroom filled So deep with violation I felt like a rapist, Like I’d torn that girl’s pale, unfathomable girdle From her hips, so much in need of being inside her I didn’t care if she sang me her pleasure or screamed. p70 1FINCKE_pages.qxd 5/21/08 9:31 AM Page 70 ...