October 2016
Myra Shapiro
shapirohm@aol.com>
shapirohm@aol.com>
My poems (and new MS of collected poems) dwell on a life lived where family and poetry dominate. They came to live side by side thanks to the Women’s Movement. I teach poetry workshops for the International Women’s Writing Guild and serve on the board of Poets House.
The Alteration of Love
I was crying—I mean
tears came—about love,
old love, long marriage
spilling past impediments of
who wants what for dinner or
in the bedroom— ins and outs
my father’s coarse humor
made a joke of: you put it in,
you pull it out, the story’s over,
only in Yiddish it rhymed,
words I don’t recall. Over,
he is. So is my mother. We
were never to be them.
Now they want me
to stop crying. I was trying
to say something about love—
how one day one of us
will disappear. That’s when
my eyes hauled up the sea,
and my mother and father came
to make a child of me.
The Alteration of Love
I was crying—I mean
tears came—about love,
old love, long marriage
spilling past impediments of
who wants what for dinner or
in the bedroom— ins and outs
my father’s coarse humor
made a joke of: you put it in,
you pull it out, the story’s over,
only in Yiddish it rhymed,
words I don’t recall. Over,
he is. So is my mother. We
were never to be them.
Now they want me
to stop crying. I was trying
to say something about love—
how one day one of us
will disappear. That’s when
my eyes hauled up the sea,
and my mother and father came
to make a child of me.
“The Alteration of Love” was first published in Rattle
©2016 Myra Shapiro
©2016 Myra Shapiro
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