Bottom

Martha Zweig

You’ll be among the first
to know. You will. You’ll see:
waddling like an emperor’s obesity
ahead of you, sunrise, the future.

In due time too little & too late engage
to marry. So shy, this pair; so much
the better to nuzzle & groom each other–
foster foundlings mutually taken-in.

And how will the years yet make me do
without a body? Not now, not for nothing, not
at all, absent its rods & cones, its propulsives
& obdurates, absent its membrane drums?

This too will end in tears. Squalls
hurling the timber snags, rips & chokes awash
crashing immense sobbing boulders: brown
rivers lurch upon them & where

does it end? Down
where? Down here.

Martha Zweig is a poet who lives in Vermont. Her collections include Get Lost, Monkey Lightning, What Kind, Vinegar Bone, A Skirmish of Harks, and Powers. A recipient of the Hopwood and Whiting awards, she worked for ten years in a pajama factory, including a term as ILGWU shop chair, and ten years as an advocate for seniors.
Originally published:
April 1, 2018

Featured

Rachel Cusk

The novelist on the “feminine non-state of non-being”
Merve Emre

Books

Renaissance Women

A new book celebrates—and sells short—Shakespeare’s sisters
Catherine Nicholson

Fady Joudah

The poet on how the war in Gaza changed his work
Aria Aber

You Might Also Like

Hearse

Martha Zweig

After Death

Roger Reeves

Newsletter

Sign up for The Yale Review newsletter and keep up with news, events, and more.