My Wife in All Things
       

My wife the sun. A chiffon dress lit with poppies and devilish hearts. Buttershine on
      a dinner roll for a dinner I missed. Her mouth salty butterscotch.

My wife the starlings. Their dust-black feathers and mouse-small faces stitched with
      stars. Skeletal legs threaded dark pink and jagged hopping that looks like joy.

My wife birch trees. The uranium factory near our apartment encircled by trees. Ash
      peeled to ash. Slender kneeling in the wind. A lace of burned fingers.

Wife hours, wife sleep. We dragged our mattress to the rooftop where the breeze was
      always night. Children quiet as ash. No light could be heard fanning among us,
      but the sirens circled our glass-dark heads.

Wife flesh, tender palace of the ears, tender net between shoulder and neck. A necklace
      of blood. Explosions overhead and the eardrums blow. She feels where blood falls
      and touches it. A red sound and its hammer.

Wife ribbon, knife, apple skin. She stayed red for months, hidden in my pocket until
      she puckered, a brown sack. I was the only one with a wife, an apple. My precious
      red love. This secret made me smile, even as the city wept.

Wife bodies laid out in rows with their eyes still open. Each one (not) my wife,
      wrapped in strips of white cloth. Her black moviestar eyes watch from the street,
      the newspaper, the television. Alive. Alive again, all the eyes hers.

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Copyright © 2012 Hadara Bar-Nadav All rights reserved
from The Frame Called Ruin
New Issues Poetry & Prose
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission