"Many a woman has a past.
But I'm told, that she has at least a dozen.
And that they all fit."
Oscar Wilde. "Past and Present:"
"The Past."
"Where did she come from, that dig in the ribs?
And who is she to pretend she's me
and take on that ditched in hopeless tone?
Who is this phony yokel, this $2 bill, this pig knuckle?
Honey, I tell her, my name is Lynn Collins Emanuel.
Someone whose whole manner says, yes, I'm overeducated.
But I'm recovering.
I have been to Europe.
And I don't even recall that stain in the road
that you refer to as Ely, Nevada.
Oh please, I think, give me a break, woman.
I mean, who would believe this arms akimbo
and faded calico West Coast depiction of the West.
Get out of here, with your fibs and your lesions.
Your deaf ear wired to its hearing aid.
I know stories about Gertrude Stein in silk stockings
drunk on Bordeaux in a garden.
What do I want to sit at your table
for, to be passed the faded confetti of the succotash,
the turkey trussed like a hostage.
Listen, I am money in the bank--
swank with it, well-informed, full of a Semitic glamour,
doleful, sleek and dark.
And shit, honey, how did you even get by the bouncer?
Editor within me, me--
Mr. Right.
And why am I now like a new tenant,
moving into the little vericosity on your left calf,
into the nylons knotted just above the knee.
And further, into the hands that held that soft gray lump of rag,
and washed, and washed again the greasy formica of the dinner
table.
How did I get to be at the head of a long line of unlucky women,
with their propensity for poverty, influenza,
weak chests, and bad judgment?
How did their troubles get to be mine?
And no, I have no idea who could be in that hand-dug grave
at the Rosebud cemetery.
The little dusty picket fence of teeth smiling up from that too
shallow niche is not mine.
I don't know who she is.
I've never seen her.
I was in Paris at the time."