from In Praise of Gemma Donati
Gemma Donati
is spilling tears of rage.
She has a found a poem among his papers
to that bitch Beatrice.
She has left the loose leaf
out, next to his books, which she has neatly
stacked on the kitchen table
for him to see when he returns:
a smear across the oak heart of their home.
It is not even a good poem.
Meanwhile she conducts
a theatre of kettles and pots
spitting on the stove
stewing with resentment the evening
meal she still cannot bring
herself to load with gravel stones
and which she will place
before his children — and him.
© 2008
Salt Publishing Limited 
