Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, I STARTED SUBSCRIBING, by TRISH REEVES


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

I STARTED SUBSCRIBING, by                    
First Line: To the christian science monitor
Subject(s): Buses; Capital Punishment; Gays & Lesbians; Photography & Photographers; Women; Hanging; Executions; Death Penalty


To the Christian Science Monitor
as a way to get more politics
into my poetry. The first night of the subscription
I dreamed of execution -
mine. I couldn't remember the trial or
offense but focused on the envelope
in my hands
that held the papers I called
"my traveling papers," my dry wit showing I was well --
adjusted, at last, to life,
the getting-out part, at least. The third time I
tried the "traveling papers" humor,
no longer with my friends, but other
women prisoners on a bus, all of us
headed for our own deaths, one woman
began to cry; I vaguely
remembered her from my first-grade class,
vaguely remembered she'd overcome being
the poor girl by becoming an M.D. (studies
say doctors fear death the most). I wondered
what she'd done to be on this bus -- something
botched? I felt bad
when I saw I'd made her cry; realized the same
old self-interest of the love poem
still ran through me. And this, of course,
frightened me a bit, enough
to make me see the stretcher and straps, enough
to cause me to open my envelope.
And what luck for me
that I was finally taking an interest in the business of life --
for the envelope held four photographs,
various head views, full frontal, profile, etc.,
of the doomed woman sitting on the stand,
so no mistakes
would be made in the death chamber,
I supposed. The woman on the stand,
though she looked a bit like me,
was not, clearly was
not, because I do not own
a brooch like the one she wore at her neck.
At this realization, I was becoming more joyful
than all the jokes in the world could make me.
Looking further into the envelope, at the account
of my crime, I knew all I needed
was a phone call -- this was
a mistake, certainly I'd committed
no crime of heterosexual passion --
all of my lovers for the last eight years
had been women --
Stop this bus! I said,
I'm not as guilty as we thought --
I'm not the woman of the photos --
Not yet, said the driver, and the bus kept rolling
as he told all the women
to check their envelopes.
There's been a mix up, he said.

Copyright © Trish Reeves
http://www.unl.edu/schooner/psmain.htm
Prairie Schooner is a literary quarterly published since 1927 which
publishes original stories, poetry, essays, and reviews. Regularly cited in the
prize journals, the magazine is considered one of the most prestigious of the
campus-based literary journals.





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