Sunday, August 5, 2012

The Other Woman

Bike61
I wrote this poem last month in response to a contest in The Paris Review .  It was inspired by the picture above and this interview with Elizabeth Bishop.

 

THE OTHER WOMAN

 

The day I won the Pulitzer Prize

the vegetable man in the market knows --

another woman won a bicycle.

It seems all his customers are lucky.

I see her flying down our mountain

in Brazil, in a fine yellow dress,

her long yellow scarf

riding the draft behind her.

Behind her, someone or

something is chasing her.

Her demon?  Her asthma?

The things she’s left undone?

She races ahead –

like I raced down our hill to tell you that day.

Finding no one at home, and nothing

but Oreos in your kitchen,

I ate two in celebration,

thinking of the vegetable man’s

other  lucky, winners.