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The Other
woman had Joan Jett
black hair and squinty eyes
I’d dyed mine red
my eyes pink from crying
the other woman
saw me as the other too
she’d had an abortion——
he was the father——and he said
we should be the opposite
of “the other”
“the same” I guess
he was drunk
we two women
unaware the other existed
until this party
maybe her eyes squinted
because she was sizing me up
he said we were never
exclusive and I laughed
because I thought of an exclusive
neighborhood or country club
we all lived
on the Lower East Side
in yucky apartments
with mice and cold radiators
and this party was in a studio
with bars on the windows
from all the break-ins
the other woman’s heart
had been broken into
her chambers raided
for antique jewelry
maybe she wanted to wear
her grandmother’s ring
when she married him
but now she knew
it would never be recovered
and their baby was gone——
her words——and I said
I swear I didn’t know
and he put my hand
on her thigh and said
the three of us should work
this out and those eyes
of hers opened wide
and I said you mean
you want us to be your sister
wives but she didn’t laugh
and he gave me a dirty look
though he was the dirty dog
and I ran to the other
side of the room to air
kiss the host and I was off
into the night
just another woman
Extended Metaphor
When you left I was a lone
earring——my hoop
weighing down my left
lobe, my hair covering
my naked right. I stripped
the back post off
and let the jewel fall.
Soon my holes closed
and I was made whole.
This is not a metaphor
for me from the waist down——
I undid my belt loop,
slipped my hand to places
you’d ignored for so long.
So long, I said, so long.
I was an extended play,
my single-self singing
solo after solo.
Cranky Voice Abecedarian
As a woman who’s lived into her 60s, I
bitch freely now
counting my pennies instead of my blessings——
diddly-squat to both.
Even smiles from infants
fill me with ire. I’m a
granny in a granny skirt, kicked from my
high horse. No one cares about the
indignities of aging——or the
jokes made at my expense.
Kickstarters for everything? Give me a break——
Let the young earn
money the old-fashioned way
not bombard me for charity.
Oh, I am old, my social security check
pathetic. I shouldn’t have fallen for that
QVC costume jewelry, or those polyester
rompers or velour jogging
suits. I didn’t even jog when I was a
teen! Now I redden with shame at the
UPS truck. To stretch my budget, I became a
vegetarian. I miss chicken——but enough
with regret. I’m mostly pissed. No Deus
ex machina will save me. I write mean
Yelp reviews for kicks. I give
zero stars because I give zero fucks.
Denise Duhamel’s most recent books of poetry are Pink Lady (Pitt Poetry Series, 2025), Second Story (2021) and Scald (2017). Blowout (2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In Which (2024) is a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize. She and the late Maureen Seaton co-authored five collections, the most recent of which was CAPRICE (Collaborations: Collected, Uncollected, and New) (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015). Her nonfiction publications include The Unrhymables: Collaborations in Prose (with Julie Marie Wade, Noctuary Press, 2019). A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, she is a distinguished university professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami. Her favorite revenge story is Carrie. What glee Denise felt when Carrie burned those horrible high school bullies and their school to the ground.
