Hera's Modern Lament

Kyra Aufferman

I am the woman who waits
in line with your milk, aspirin, bologna.

Her mouth is a scarlet alphabet

I only know those hips
will not give you children, just bruises
from their bone.

You cringe at my ellipses, as if my pause
would be the silence to trick your truth.

She was smaller, cleaner,
than I expected, as if sinking

into her brown body, transformed
by your hands hot against her: a heat
I understand. Does she know

there is a scar across your palm where it was sliced
like apple flesh, fixing our backyard fence?

Volume CXX, No.1