Woman Troubles
Was
it the bad company, bad whiskey or bad habits and political excitement? Brain
fever, congestion, or the Death of your sons in the war? Did you fall apart,
disappointed in love, dog bitten or bitter, was it egotism, rheumatism, or a
fall from
a horse? Feebleness, jealousy or some other female disease? Was it the fire in
the the farmhouse, the lost cat, your hysteria after his desertion and you with
the 6 kids simmering on the outskirts of town? Was it uterine derangement, venereal
excess greediness or Grief? What superstition, what time of life, what stroke
of insight brought you through those tall oak doors hard slamming behind you, locked
up for good with you and your domestic afflictions, your cardboard suitcase,
and your deranged masturbations.
Woman
Troubles. What troubled you, woman? Auntie
Cora who received no honorable mention at the family table. Only murmers and
downward glances. Forks
and knives placed carefully on the edges of our chipped china plates til polite
conversation resumed and your name, sealed in linen napkins on our laps, was simply rinsed
out in the next day’s wash. Hung to dry. Carried away on intemperate winds.
Love this! Perhaps it was the Wondering Womb, Hippocrates' theory that the displaced womb accounted for women's many medical maladies. My favorite historical diagnosis of woman troubles. This is so powerful, puts me in mind of all the women who went stark, raving mad on the prairie (Wisconsin Death Trip anyone?). MKP
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