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  • A Woman’s Tale
  • Mary Jo Salter (bio)

In the first scene, I’m eighteenwith a waist of twenty-four inches.I’m wearing a spring blousemy mother sewed for me.A businessman in a suitcomes walking down the street,stops in his tracks, and cries“My God, you’re adorable.I want you to have my babies!”Then, good-naturedlyshaking his head, not waitingfor any sort of reply,he keeps on ambulating.

A decade later. Anotherman has found me winning:this one impregnates me.We’d done the romantic thing,the ring, the honeymoon.Now, on a scorching dayin July, some guy approachingon the sidewalk takes me in:at nine months, five foot three, [End Page 264]

I’m nothing but a bellywaddling along like Falstaff.He flings his head back to laugh—A belly laugh, if you will.

That was thirty summers ago,And it still gives me a chill. [End Page 265]

Mary Jo Salter

Mary Jo Salter is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Nothing by Design and A Phone Call to the Future: Selected Poems. She is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Baltimore.

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