Martha Zweig: “Forwarding Address”
FORWARDING ADDRESS
Nobody leaves home
not getting up out of bed. First you set
the alarm. Then it’s time.
Somebody else from away will settle
comfy enough into the plot you quit, snip
at the hedge, exfoliate, resurface & beware
the dog-departed’s patrol. Blue flames
will raise a spaghetti water to boil.
Oven’s easy admitting a stranger’s first
rosemary-rubbled roast to slide right in.
So: briskly off. Time itself has helpfully
laid out the shiny shoes, mirror
image & crisp cutout shadow quick to take
me up: I adjust in my right
mind my left mind behind.
Family proverb chews & swallows
itself like a horsepill choking down:
Everybody’s got to be somewhere: nowhere
isn’t until you’re not, which you’re not yet, so there,
assuming of course you could tell.
Martha Zweig’s four full-length poetry collections include Get Lost (DHP Oregon), Monkey Lightning (Tupelo Press), What Kind and Vinegar Bone (both from Wesleyan University Press). Her chapbooks are Powers (Stinehour Press, Vermont Council on the Arts), and A Skirmish of Harks (Jacar e-book). Zweig’s poems appear widely; her recognitions include Hopwood Awards and a Whiting Award.