Ellen Doré Watson
Not a Sweater

An unmarriage is not a sweater half

unraveled or sheared in two not half

of anything not a husk or shed thing

or artifact behind glass or in the rubbish

not at the bottom of the sea calling out

nor tied to a chair with duct tape sealing

its mouth an unmarriage is not what one

or the other or anyone thinks not storm cloud

or tremor or even the sky finally in placid

agreement with the earth though like weather

it is not the air we breathe nor the mechanism 

of breathing but irrefutably present in the gray

pink yellow bubblewrap of lung tissue in

perpetuity in the air pocketed down deep

not sustaining not part of the fabric

not dead.

 
Found In Volume 32, No. 06
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  • Ellen Doré Watson
Ellen Doré Watson
About the Author

Ellen Doré Watson’s collection Ladder Music won the New York/New England Award from Alice James.  She directs the Poetry Center at Smith College and serves as an editor of The Massachusetts Review.