Jill Crammond
Sonnet for My Ex-Husband, Dead Again
And here I am with my bouquet beneath his hospital
gown, our grown children striding in & out among
the rose stems. By now this bridal posey is a corpse.
Not the wedding you dream of, but some women
are widows & one beauty changed her name
to Divorce. Once, I watched a woman lose her husband.
I heard her black dress tell the funeral
flowers, Some days the darkness is a torniquet.
That was the day I bled dry, any bones I wore
turning to ash. Not my epilogue. Knot & wedding song.
I was married. I died. My ex-husband rose from the dead.
Our children grew eyes, our potatoes refused to eat.
If this were a cautionary tale, I would be unlocked
cottage, sick widow waiting on a basket of woodcutters.
And here I am with my bouquet beneath his hospital
gown, our grown children striding in & out among
the rose stems. By now this bridal posey is a corpse.
Not the wedding you dream of, but some women
are widows & one beauty changed her name
to Divorce. Once, I watched a woman lose her husband.
I heard her black dress tell the funeral
flowers, Some days the darkness is a torniquet.
That was the day I bled dry, any bones I wore
turning to ash. Not my epilogue. Knot & wedding song.
I was married. I died. My ex-husband rose from the dead.
Our children grew eyes, our potatoes refused to eat.
If this were a cautionary tale, I would be unlocked
cottage, sick widow waiting on a basket of woodcutters.
--
Jill Crammond’s chapbook, Handbook for Unwell Mothers, is forthcoming in May 2023 from Finishing Line Press. Her work has appeared in SWWIM, Slipstream, Stirring, Limp Wrist, and others. Her poem, “How to Bury a Bird,” published in The Shore, was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize, as was “American Dad Sonnet,” published in Kitchen Table Quarterly.
Jill Crammond’s chapbook, Handbook for Unwell Mothers, is forthcoming in May 2023 from Finishing Line Press. Her work has appeared in SWWIM, Slipstream, Stirring, Limp Wrist, and others. Her poem, “How to Bury a Bird,” published in The Shore, was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize, as was “American Dad Sonnet,” published in Kitchen Table Quarterly.