Bathhouse, and: Death Custom
- Bathhouse, and: Death Custom
Bathhouse
I am hungry for the curveof stomach, for stubble, a rippleof fat, and even though I knowI am not supposed to, I memorizethe thighs beside me, the pressof muscle and flesh under the water.The women of my childhoodwere draped like furniturefor a long absence, their shapesmysterious and ripe for speculation.Next to me, a woman bathes,running her hand between the foldsof her skin as comfortablyas my mother ran her handsover a soapy plate. Maybewhen I return home from this placewhere we are allowed to knoweach other, I will walk nakedamong the houses, calling outto the girls who live thereand may never see any breastsbut their own unless they runinto the street to witness mine.Maybe they will undress, too,a great crowd of bodies finallyrevealing themselves to each other. [End Page 628]
Death Custom
There's too much land here, enough to storeevery last rotting bit as long as we like. In closer country,measures are taken, bones dug up after a few years, an emptyingas natural as a weekend morning when the jam no longer fitson the shelf in the refrigerator, when you pull each tub outof its corner and pop the lid, examine the damage. The chillslows things down, but nothing stops the mold. Best to tossthe whole mess in the trash, but even then the sporesget away from you, drifting along the hallway, demandingattention after the forgetting. They know they were worthyonce of preservation. What is a grave if not a cabinetfor the things we have let wait too long? [End Page 629]
alice pettway is the author of the poetry books The Time of Hunger, Moth, and Station Lights, which is forthcoming in 2021 from Salmon Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Bitter Oleander, The Colorado Review, and The Threepenny Review. She lives and writes in Shanghai, China.
