In the pantry I keep a full bag of flour,
Waiting for you to fade from the wedding picture.
Our exchange of apples was tradition and

You’ve been nothing but a failed math test
On a shaky balcony. Head on the headboard,
Standing by the oven, I’m baking a new room for you.

The trips we took to the chinchilla farm
Where we paid to pick blueberries—
That’s where you used up the room I had for you.

Kansas, I can’t travel with you any longer.
The rattle and shake of your shutters
Is the girl you really want—collapsed

Beneath books, selling herself off
One by one. She chews on her fingers,
Lost in the tangle of your tether.

I’m scheduling an appointment for amputation.
Seven shots of novocain and you still seem to love her.
Don’t leave the room; I’ll be right back with my instrument.

—Joanne Straley

Joanne Straley's poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Denver Quarterly, Red China Magazine, and Rhapsodia. She is the author of Stingray, a chapbook of poems.

Originally published in the summer 2005 issue of Boston Review