September 2018
Robert Wexelblatt
wexelblatt@verizon.net
NOTE:  I live in Wakefield, Massachusetts and teach at Boston University.  In March, Firestone published two Mrs. Podolski poems and a few encouraging people let me know they liked Mrs. P. and what she had to say to her young friend.  So, here she is once again, on two of her favorite topics—marriage and widowhood. 
​
I will have a new book out next month, The Posthumous Papers of Sidney Fein.  Hsi-wei Tales, a cycle of stories about an imaginary Chinese peasant/poet, will be out next year.
 
Mrs. Podolski Tells Me A Little About Her Marriage
 
 
It was uninteresting 
because what’s interesting
always teeters on a border
between two opposites:
logic and passion, say,
or what’s pretty and what’s true.
Mr. Podolski was not a
man for frontiers, my dear.
The Brits have a word for
types like Mr. P.  Bloke,       
just one bluff, blunt syllable.
He went to work, came home,
ate, slept, hung out; exactly
twice a week we screwed
or whatever word you like
for doing it nowhere near
a border but in some sort of
sexual Iowa.
                       And yet
there was a goodness in him
like you expect to find in
Iowa, far away from any
boundary, so that if our marriage
were a country then he loved
me right in the middle of it.
 
 
 
Mrs. Podolski’s Advice to Mrs. Ardekian

​
Don’t tell how many nights you cried
before you stopped, after he died.
Who cares for widows’ loneliness
or dreary tales of their distress
or twice invites to sit at table
a frown atop a dress of sable?
The heart-free sleeve, a blouse that’s bright
with witticisms half the night
make one welcome, even prized.
My dear, you would be well advised    
to wrap your woe and put it where
it can’t offend those who don’t care— 
stuff anguish in your bottom drawer
and try to speak of it no more.        
       “Mrs. Podolski Tells Me a Little about Her Marriage” first appeared in The Carolina Quarterly
                “Mrs Podolski’s Advice to Mrs. Ardekian” first appeared in The Larcom Review

 © 2018 Robert Wexelblatt​
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