portion of the artwork for Arlene Ang's poems

Want
Arlene Ang

A woman’s hand will close your eyes.
—C.D. Wright


Today the man begins and ends on his left side.
The kitchen table conforms to the dripping.

His knees are bent, drowned in bruises.
And still she is the more silent one.

When you visit a new city, you must bring back
something from that place. This is the father

talking. She has run out of places to hide.
The want is always the first to betray her.

Then the hands. He is always dying;
she always brings him back for dinner.

Today the knife. And the sound of brown paper
as it wraps itself around the meat.


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FRiGG: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry | Issue 27 | Law & Order Issue | Winter 2010