High Desert Journal: Ways to Prevent Adultery, Numbers One Through Six

Ways to Prevent Adultery, Numbers One Through Six

Poetry

by Maya Zeller | 0 Comments

If your husband wants

to draw you naked,
let him do it.

Don't crawl
away limp-necked,
quivering snowberry

thighs you might think
you have. To him your flesh
is an alluvial tower

he climbs
like a mountain,
each pink smear

a ledge for his hands.
Let him tell you
he wants to carry

you over his shoulder.
If he loves pulp
in his orange juice

don't strain it out.
Think of the ocean
sealed in his skin.

But mostly,
if he is a sun man,
bring him sun,

your arms roping it in
as if holding
a million yellow moths,

their wings lit
like pitch in a forest
still smoldering

in August after
all the trees
have burned to the ground.

Ways to Prevent Adultery, Numbers Seven Through Nine

Forget baking. No man
ever wanted muffins
more than he wanted
to take you fishing. But don't
let his arms

work the oars so swiftly
you miss the nest of gold
finch flicking their sun-
swept world or the muskrat
taking its own time

so seriously. These are
muscles you both
need to stretch, pinch
awake from your swollen
lives. While your

raft scrapes pebbles
and swerves left
to dock against bunched
autumn grass,
plan to pull his face

close so you can watch
a black insect drill
into clay. What will it hurt
to burrow your
hand into his, take

the rod awhile,
cast until you catch
budding crimson,
some scrap of meat
you both can eat?

Ways to Prevent Adultery, Number Ten

The local gym is offering
pole dancing classes,
and you're signing up.
Nevermind feminist
studies, the woman telling you
not to be a basin
or a willow branch curving
around something empty
as wind. Yours is a pliant
spine; your rag-like
limbs stitch into scarves,
make ready for floods.
Lean into the breeze, into
the mouth of a river,
into a throat. His eyes
are not what that old
hag is thinking of-they
thicken to syrup
when you stir them.
You can build
a shrine of immunity,
somewhere he'll swim to
again and again.
You arc like a bird
finished molting, no longer
needing wings, the fibered
tracts, or the feathered skirt
of women gathering
about your hips, lips gapped
with language.

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High Desert Journal

001

Ways to Prevent Adultery, Numbers One Through Six

Poetry

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