by Margaret D. Stetz
Were there parties
with pink biscuits?
And friends woven
in tight silken circles?
Did I once wear lace?
Now there’s bread,
but not bread, really,
with all flour gone.
And rags dank from scrubbing.
(So very much scrubbing.)
Bleached out,
I sit alone.
Locked up and locked in.
But just outside
my attic door—
“Miss Minchin,” I call it.
Red with fury,
inflated with spite,
hissing and spiky,
waiting around corners,
alert and keen
to strike
and rip,
always awake and
whispering,
“Crewe! Crewe!”
(Or is it “You! You!”?)
Margaret D. Stetz is the Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and Professor of Humanities at the University of Delaware. At age sixteen, she began publishing poetry in literary magazines such as Hanging Loose and Beyond Baroque, but then abandoned the genre for decades, dedicating herself instead to teaching work by other poets, especially women. Recently, however, poems have started to appear suddenly in her dreams, on her computer screen, and on stray pieces of paper on her kitchen counter. These are two of them.
Latest posts by Margaret D. Stetz (see all)
- A Little Pandemic Princess - April 1, 2021
- I Am Nothing Like Jane Eyre - April 1, 2021