Hearse

Martha Zweig

                                      after William Blake

Oops, hit the skid rind, cruel world
slipped a corkscrewy peel
of it’s-about-time.

Spirits high, royalty flung itself wide
open upon its own unhinges & by a splinter
of chance that night I rose, my first foot

received into a golden glassyeyed
slingback pump, slick as princeling himself & the moon\
by its half & half-
again measures recalculating what brass
tarnish or shine
he & his might take to me & mine.

Heels, toes, how didn’t both poor stepsisters flail
tipsy & lose
their balances, bloody-shod & blind!

Remember the cornfield listening?– nick
of the worm in the rolypoly
pumpkin’s undercarriage?

Sooner or later a watched
wedding boils.

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

The Shapes of Grief

Witnessing the unbearable
Christina Sharpe

Writing in Pictures

Richard Scarry and the art of children’s literature
Chris Ware

Garth Greenwell

The novelist on writing about the body in crisis
Meghan O’Rourke

You Might Also Like

Bottom

Martha Zweig

Poem of the Week

Notes for My Funeral

Alex Dimitrov

Newsletter

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