Taste

(Okay, Mary Jo Bang is not my style, which is my problem and not hers, but there were a few things that I could enjoy.)

Here's A Fine Word: Prettiplease

By Mary Jo Bang

Mrs. Donna spoke, saying it was all very clear.
In the long month of Maggio, Louise would be jailed
in a match that one might say was morbid--
as in an attachment to one who would give not a fig
for the right to be near.

She wrote down a date
with an eight at the end. This, she said, means the end
will occur at a seaside resort, a respectable spa
where one eats in one's robe and takes side-by-side baths
in beds made of ready-mixed mud.

She said Louise should then proceed, designless
and dissident, to a place where unlikely glitter would drift
like snow in the May of a previous year. That's memory,
my dear, she said softly.
Listen, Louise told her, he gave me a pill,

saying, With this you'll taste of divinity. With this
you'll be easy to love. He said, Lie down, and I did.

(Published in Grove Press books, 2001.)