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  • Signifier, and: Playing the Nanny to Be With You
  • Meg Shevenock (bio)

Signifier

Winter mornings when you failed to explainyour fascination with a certain German philosopher

who argued that "red house" does not mean red house,does not mean anything at all, and that is why "God" [End Page 106]

is a hole in the air—if a word means nothing for what it signifies—I needed out. I crashed my cereal bowl in the sink,

put on two pairs of socks and your slippers, and walkeddown to the river to watch the bright, wooden houseboats

drift idly by. Looking at them felt certain enough.They had bold names and smoke rose visibly from the chimneys

and sometimes someone inside would push a facebetween the ruffled curtains. Dogs barked on boat roofs in the cold,

and, everywhere around me on the path, bicyclists went whipping by;that chill, the eyes that failed to lock, felt certain, too.

In that country, for months as you studied, spreading the foreignmanuscripts around you on the desk, I tried to feel less numb.

Every day along the river, watching the swans diveheadfirst into the freezing water, my skull was aching.

At night, in bed, I'd tried to explain how I was waiting for a momentthat would allow me to remember my body. Always, too soon,

your limbs would jerk, giving you away—sound asleep,you were lost to my voice, meaning nothing, going nowhere. [End Page 107]

Playing the Nanny to Be With You

It was the winter I'd come home in three-o'clock duskand make love to you with an icy desire.I wore inside my wrists the teeth marksof a child who laughed at me, and sometimes your marksoverlapped the child's on my body. Why did it seem duskall the time? I felt your desire

that was just as exhaustive. Then you'd switch on the desk lampto read from Genesis; and in my corner, by the fire,I read Jane Eyre, obsessed and half afraid that I'd have to facethat woman in the attic—her black ravings and scarred face.Watching your eyes brighten by the lamp,I believed you would abandon me to the fire.

Next year, when each morning the skyis another low ceiling, when the childin my care hides too long in the basement, I will movewith clumsier, more forgetful hands. My life in America before I movedto join you—long library nights, mornings at the sea—was swallowed in the sky.You said to me, "We love each other." I lay down with that like a child. [End Page 108]

Meg Shevenock

Meg Shevenock's poetry was selected for Best New Poets 2006. Her work has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Passages North, and other journals. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of Florida and is currently pursuing another MFA in sculpture from Ohio State University.

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