The Revisionist Dream

Maxine Kumin

Well, she didn't kill herself that afternoon.

It was a mild day in October, we sat outside

over sandwiches. She said she had begun

to practice yoga, take piano lessons,

rewrite her drama rife with lust and pride

and so she didn't kill herself that afternoon,

hugged me, went home, cranked the garage doors open,

scuffed through the garish leaves, orange and red,

that brought on grief. She said she had begun

to translate Akhmatova, her handsome Russian

piano teacher rendering the word-for-word

so she didn't kill herself that afternoon.

She cooked for him, made quiche and coq au vin.

He stood the Czerny method on its head

while her fingers flew. She said she had begun

accelerandos, Julia Child, and some

expand-a-lung deep breaths to do in bed

so she didn't kill herself that afternoon.

We ate our sandwiches. The dream blew up at dawn.

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Why did my parents send me to the schools
That I with knowledge might enrich my mind?
Since the desire to know first made men fools,
And did corrupt the root of all mankind.

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The Double Image by Anne Sexton

1.

I am thirty this November.
You are still small, in your fourth year.
We stand watching the yellow leaves go queer,
flapping in the winter rain,
falling flat and washed. And I remember
mostly the three autumns you did not live here.
They said I’d never get you back again.

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Home Burial by Robert Frost

He saw her from the bottom of the stairs
Before she saw him. She was starting down,
Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.
She took a doubtful step and then undid it
To raise herself and look again. He spoke
Advancing toward her: ‘What is it you see
From up there always—for I want to know.’
She turned and sank upon her skirts at that,
And her face changed from terrified to dull.
He said to gain time: ‘What is it you see,’
Mounting until she cowered under him.
‘I will find out now—you must tell me, dear.’
She, in her place, refused him any help
With the least stiffening of her neck and silence.
She let him look, sure that he wouldn’t see,

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from Each in a Place Apart by James McMichael

I know I’ll lose her.
One of us will decide. Linda will say she can’t
do this anymore or I’ll say I can’t. Confused
only about how long to stay, we’ll meet and close it up.
She won’t let me hold her. I won’t care that my
eyes still work, that I can lift myself past staring.
Nothing from her will reach me after that.
I’ll drive back to them, their low white T-shaped house

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The Japanese Wife by Charles Bukowski

O lord, he said, Japanese women,
real women, they have not forgotten,
bowing and smiling
closing the wounds men have made;
but American women will kill you like they
tear a lampshade,
American women care less than a dime,
they’ve gotten derailed,

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My Sister's Sleep by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

She fell asleep on Christmas Eve:
At length the long-ungranted shade
Of weary eyelids overweigh'd
The pain nought else might yet relieve.

Our mother, who had lean'd all day
Over the bed from chime to chime,
Then rais'd herself for the first time,

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A Secret Gratitude by James Wright

Eugen Boissevain died in the autumn of 1949. I had wondered already, at the time of our visit, what would happen to Edna [Millay] if he should die first.—Edmund Wilson

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Sway by Louis Simpson

Swing and sway with Sammy Kaye Everyone at Lake Kearney had a nickname:
there was a Bumstead, a Tonto, a Tex,

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Mary Shelley in Brigantine by Stephen Dunn

Because the ostracized experience the world
in ways peculiar to themselves, often seeing it
clearly yet with such anger and longing
that they sometimes enlarge what they see,
she at first saw Brigantine as a paradise for gulls.
She must be a horseshoe crab washed ashore.

How startling, though, no one knew about her past,

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