The Proclamation
By Letitia Trent



I'm erasing the you that came before this

The erection in my head, a skyscraper inVermont, a business plan bound for failure

let's not let longing

make us x-eyed and prostrate


I'm pretending you reciprocate
this longing without an object
and what was your name again, anyway?

Remember how in Austen

women are always offended by too-emphatic

proclamations of love? At love without its reasonable limits?

You never read her, you

never being a girl, but you can imagine

a woman ashamed in her bonnet, all of her fences

trampled by the cow-eyed horses

I like to think of you that way
sickened by my advances

I walked all over your barbed wire

letting all the drunk kids and cars in
and you my field I depend on
for milk and honey and bread
on the tables I hoped to set
I imagined, sick then,

that the naked beams
in the clean room shook when we clapped
eyes and elements

I was alone on the stage and you
the only audience member

Words walked in greasepaint
and crinoline, good sides to the light,
paper knives between elbow and whalebone
in silk-soled shoes to keep
the padding soft

Instead, imagine

a television on all day
in the empty waiting room

its heat bleaching the magazine covers
humm a buzz in the receptionist's earpiece

and the one waiting for his bloodwork
the one it beams its breasts and teeth for

waits in the parking lot
behind sandwiches of glass
his mouth full of smoke

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