Joan Gibb Engel


The Quarrel


In a dream I approach my nineteen-year-old self
as we walk into our mother’s room
shades drawn, smell of mattress, talc, and almond
to show her the engagement ring.

And I tell my young self, “You will forget it all—
the look of rooms where sex awakened in you,
night sleep robbed by want, the fierce possessiveness
that children bring, times of calm

of boredom, mornings with their luxuries and lists,
the days, the years, the years and years—
you will meet them on the street and not know their faces,
laughter will hide your confusion.”

My nineteen-year-old self twists the ring on her finger,
says, “I will never know you then,”
goes to the bed where Mother lies asleep
and shouts, “Wake UP!”

I wake instead. A man lies bare beside me.
I twist the ring, the ring that rests
in the hollow of its making. I laugh
and pull the covers high and bend

my knees around his buttocks.
But there’s a pressure in my chest—
I never knew me, then or now. The days went by
the days, the years, the years and years.

Also by Joan Gibb Engel: "Query"

Joan Gibb Engel

Joan Gibb Engel, mother, grandmother, and former teacher, divides her time between Tucson, Arizona where she is active in the Poetry Center of the University of Arizona, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Her studies, too, have encompassed diverse material—an A.B in biological science and a PhD in creative writing. Her poems have appeared in Comstock Review, San Pedro River Review, Under a Warm Green Linden, and elsewhere.

ISSN 2472-338X
© 2020