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"The Woman Who Was Left
at the Altar," the poem.

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"She calls her shadow
Juan, looking back often

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as she walks.

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She has grown fat, breasts
huge as reservoirs.

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She once opened her
blouse in church

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to show the silent town what a
plentiful mother she could be.

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Since her old mother
died, buried in black,

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she lives alone.

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Out of the lace,
she made curtains

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for her room, doilies
out of the veil.

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They are now yellow as malaria.

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She hangs live chickens
from her waist to sell,

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walks to the town swinging
her skirts of flesh.

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She doesn't speak to anyone.

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Dogs follow the scent
of blood to be shed.

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In their hungry, yellow
eyes, she sees his face.

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She takes him to the
knife time after time."

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[WHISTLE]

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I know.

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Men usually don't like
that poem, you know.

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[APPLAUSE]

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It has knives in it and chickens
getting their heads cut off.

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And I wondered about that.

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Because I've really
never even seen

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that happen, except once,
when I saw an aunt of mine

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decapitate a chicken.

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And she was doing
it just for dinner,

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not because she hated men.

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And so when I dug
back in my memory,

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I found my grandmother talking.

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And that's why I
wrote these essays.