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Column 829

Love Worn

Intro by Kwame Dawes
02.09.2021

In many Amer­i­can poems, the poet makes a per­son­al appear­ance and offers us a reveal­ing mono­logue from cen­ter stage, but there are lots of fine poems in which the poet, a stranger in a strange place, observes the lives of oth­ers from a dis­tance and imag­ines her way into them. This poem by Lita Hoop­er is a good exam­ple of this kind of writing.

Editor’s Note: This col­umn (75) is a reprint from the Amer­i­can Life in Poet­ry archive as we bid farewell to Ted Koos­er, and work to final­ize the new web­site and forth­com­ing columns curat­ed by Kwame Dawes.

Love Worn

In a tavern on the Southside of Chicago
a man sits with his wife. From their corner booth
each stares at strangers just beyond the other's shoulder,
nodding to the songs of their youth. Tonight they will not fight.

Thirty years of marriage sits between them
like a bomb. The woman shifts
then rubs her right wrist as the man recalls the day
when they sat on the porch of her parents' home.

Even then he could feel the absence of something
desired or planned. There was the smell
of a freshly tarred driveway, the slow heat,
him offering his future to folks he did not know.

And there was the blooming magnolia tree in the distance—
its oversized petals like those on the woman's dress,
making her belly even larger, her hands
disappearing into the folds.

When the last neighbor or friend leaves their booth
he stares at her hands, which are now closer to his,
remembers that there had always been some joy. Leaning
closer, he believes he can see their daughter in her eyes.

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Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. From Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade, University of Michigan Press, 2006, by permission of the author. Poem copyright © 2006 by Lita Hooper. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.