Mistress by Clarinda Harriss
Mistress
Clarinda HarrissI should be the shiny one,
all my pores oozing the fat
of the earth.When I lean to the table
my breasts should rest on the cloth
plump as hens.If I can’t pick and choose, fire
guests who don’t please me after
the first course,I should at least rule feast days,
blushing as the family toasts
my grand meal.Instead I’m the pet under
the table, nosing crotches,
begging scraps.
MARGINALIA
Saw this comic strip last night. The Lockhorns, I think. By Hoest & Reiner. Or maybe I got that the other way around. Anyway, it went like this: “If ignorance is bliss, Leroy, why aren’t you any happier?”
Is it really fine not to know? To settle at the state of the unknowable? And what of the things that pass you by? Ignorance sure isn’t bliss. I know that now. But sometimes, sometimes, it makes you sleep better at night.
ABOUT CLARINDA HARRISS
Clarinda Harriss is a professor emerita of English at Towson University, She continues to serve as corporate president and editor-in-chief of BrickHouse Books, Inc., MD’s oldest literary press; to work with prison writers; to give free workshops at various venues; to boast two children and 5 grown-up grandchildren. Her most recent poetry collection is Innumerable Moons, with illustrations by Peter Bruun; its theme is her recent 6 years of being the loving caretaker of an… (more)
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ENDNOTES
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