Rachel Zucker - Museum of Accidents

Rachel Zuker’s poems in Museum of Accidents (one of the NBCC finalists) are mostly lineated in a cloudy way that ranges across the page free of the left margin. As such things are difficult to reproduce on a blog, I went looking for one that stays tied to the left. There aren’t many, so the following poem isn’t representative in that way, but it is representative in tone and subject. It’s also much shorter than most all the rest of the poems in the collection. FYI.


AFTER BABY AFTER BABY


When we made love you had
the dense body of a Doberman
and the square head of a Rottweiler.

With my eyes closed I saw:
a light green plate with seared scallops
and a perfect fillet of salmon on a cedar plank.

Now I am safe in the deep V of a weekday
wanting to tell you how the world
is full of street signs and strollers
and pregnant women in spandex.

The bed and desk both want me.
The windows, the view, the idea of Paris.

With my minutes, I chip away at the idiom,
an unmarked pebble in a fast current. Later,
on my way to the story, a boy with a basketball
yells, You scared? to someone else, and the things
on the list to buy came home with me.
And the baby. And your body.