After Sylvia Plath’s Sonnet to Eva‍
‍                            - for Joanne

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 —
scraps of reverie strung on your lover’s massive harp
on that eve of fixed political subterfuge.

The idiot dove with its claws encased in a silver bracelet
chirps the hour you told me she was taken.

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