Wager

Mil Norman-Risch

 

I will assert

that, no, a man

does not sit at the sickbed of his wife

holding her hand

 

if he has not inquired in some earlier time

about the freckles —“or are these moles?”

accumulating on her left breast

or, before that, if he did not wake up one day and say,

for instance, “last night

I dreamed we counted four hundred and forty-four fish,

imagine! lying on the roadside

in the dark.” Or if he had never remarked

that the strands of her hair, which he pulled from his sweater,

might well have been there all year long;

Or if he were not the type to say to her, while removing

an orange seed from his mouth with his fingers,

his right cheek crumbed with toast,

wait, say it again, tell that part again.

 

Instead, I assert

that the proverbial Man at the sickbed of his possibly dying Wife

who has not said and seen these things, or others like them,

while he does sit with her at her bedside in the room,

he does not hold her hand.

        


image001.jpgWinner of New Millennium Writing’s 2008 Creative Nonfiction Prize and also American Poetry Journal’s 2007 American Poet’s Prize, Mil Norman-Risch has published poetry in a number of journals, including Willow Springs, White Pelican Review, Sojourners, Freshwater, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Common Ground, and Avatar Review. A poem of hers is featured in Agha Shahid Ali’s anthology, Ravishing DisUnities, (Wesleyan University Press, 2001). She teaches and writes in Richmond, Virginia.

 

 

 Return