Rebecca Hazelton


The Husband at Rest 


Now am I as the century  
                    unwinding, the lustrous  
             past sifted from our present grind. 
                                           Vast, matter of fact, 
                 painful in the fine and particulate. 

You think I am steady  
breath, steady hands,  
                   a man who has no desire to take  
       from trouble. 

You think I am  
         a man who is held to a line. 

Today you told me  
                  of one more reason not to love you   
and the telling was a bell  
             ringing out the joy of its own cracking. 
                                              Now we know 
                                     what you’re made of. 
Now we can see inside. 

                     Night is closing on our small backyard,  
and the bats ring the sky  
                     in widening schools of black scrap. 
You are somewhere in the gold box  
                                   at the top of the hill,  
moving objects  
               from room to room. 

No matter how I try,  
              I cannot forget how long  
            I’ve held the world above my head. 
Its weight feels like your body  
                               after you’ve fallen asleep  
                       beside me: dense, vacant, and imperative. 

                  Loneliness is a complete calculation  
but what we are equal to  
isn’t the same. 

                      There are whole calendars  
where you crossed off the days,  
                                                   so assured  
that more were coming. 
                                    I see with a longer view. 


The Husband Has a Dream 


The streetlights in the cul-de-sac  
                     blinked on one by one, illuminating  
              the husband’s grief as it rose and fell 
 in radiant clouds of dust, settling on the morning  
                      glories clamped tight against the night,  
            on his suit jacket,  
            on the backs of his hands. 
                                          If he tried to brush it away 
                                  it smeared him with greasy soot,  
                                                            so he didn’t try. 
All around him were houses  
                 whose windows poured golden light  
                                                             onto the lawns  
and inside each room  
              small dramas enacted. 

In one, parents floated  
        around the dinner table, desperate  
                             to keep a child laughing. 
In another, a man fucked a bored woman  
                  on the stairs and with every step   
                                   she slipped further away. 
A teenaged boy read a book and drank his first beer. 
A dog slept alone by the fire. 

                          It seemed to the husband  
                                     that someone must be waiting  
       for him to come home, but  
               there were no keys in his pockets. 

                                           By then there was so much dust 
                      in the air that it almost seemed solid before him,  
                                      forming a frame,  
                                      then a door, then a lock. 
The hardest part was grasping the handle— 
                       which was suffering— 
                              and then he was through.

 

Rebecca Hazelton is an award-winning poet, writer, critic, and editor. Her first book, Fair Copy, won the Wheeler Prize from Ohio State University Press. Her second book, Vow, was an editor’s pick from Cleveland State University Press. Her most recent book of poetry, Gloss, was published by the University of Wisconsin University Press, and was a New York Times “New and Notable” pick.

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