After Sylvia Plath’s Sonnet to Eva
forJoanne
All right, she said, on Hannukah eve, broken
in that way, they crushed your love, her gloved bones
handing you latkes from an empty chair, a token.
Observe a dying insect in cracked amber stones —
this is a woman: her love but a gem
betrayed in a moan of geography broken
by inane legal whims, two unmarried women are condemned
those idle vows of jargon yet unspoken
The demigod of dementia pushed you apart
men scrapped your shared bedroom into platitudes —
scrapsof reverie strung on your lover’s massive harp
on thateve of fixed political subterfuge.
Theidiot dove with its claws encased in a silver bracelet
chirpsthe hour you told me she was taken.