DAILY POEM
The Paris Review
Featured by Yahoo
- Fri, Apr 3 at 8:15 AM
View this email in your browser 
Brenda Nasio
missed signals
for barbara and bruce
we went there mostly in spring
to the house (which used to be a barn)
with a garden outside and
a free-standing tub upstairs
past the three bedrooms (the last one was mine)
the weather shifted in extremes and
we adapted
either sipping cups of tea
wrapped in thick sweaters curled up
on the rug or sunning ourselves
on the lawn sipping bloody marys
in our underwear (while bruce was in town)
in the afternoon we
would nap in rooms of antique
jars and lamps and needlepointed chairs
where the windows were sealed
with plastic against flies and
the wind stirred through places
loosely taped
once,
david and mary came along
with their dog, taffy, which we walked
for miles past farms uphill one
particularly hot day in may
coming back down we noticed
skins tied drying in a small shed
that afternoon while everyone else
(i thought) slept
i got up and found David
on the couch downstairs
he asked me i could read his palm
i said it wasn’t in my repertoire and
went the kitchen for a glass of
ice water puzzled and
embarrassed that mary might have overheard
later, i told barbara and
she just smiled
we didn’t go there much in summer and
by autumn the house was sold
months later david called to say
we should have lunch and would i help him
with an article he was writing
he never called back and now lives in d.c.
with mary and taffy
bruce is in chicago and
barbara’s in new york
And to read more poems from The Paris Review, make sure to subscribe! In addition to four print issues per year, you’ll also receive complete digital access to our seventy-three-year archive. 
Comments
Post a Comment