Jennifer Finstrom: Dating in Middle Age
John William Waterhouse, Psyche Opening the Door to Cupid’s Garden
Ex-Husband
“The door swings open:
O god of hinges,
god of long voyages,
you have kept faith.”
– Margaret Atwood, “The Door,”
Say instead he is the man you met
in 1992. You admired his long braid
of black hair and brought him free refills
when he sketched and studied late at night
at the IHOP where you worked. And when
you finally went out that summer, you
ended up back at your apartment where
you played him a poor quality Marlene
Dietrich cassette and drank warm gin
straight from the bottle, and somehow,
at the end of the night, he still wanted
to see you again. This afternoon he texts
that he isn’t able to bring the alcohol wipes
and other supplies he had planned to drop
off because now he’s sick and won’t know
what it is until tomorrow. He tells you
to be safe and you tell him the same thing.
You can almost see your old condo from
where you live now, and you look in that
direction, remembering a summer a few
years before you moved out. You were
working together to take out a window unit
air conditioner, can still feel how heavy it
was between you. You knew there might
be spiders inside of it, or worse, those large
house centipedes, and he suddenly tells
you “Close your eyes. Don’t look down,”
afraid you’ll drop your end if you see what’s
there. And it’s hard, and you’re scared,
but you close your eyes. You don’t
look down. You still aren’t looking down.
John William Waterhouse, Penelope and the Suitors
Penelope and the Suitors
“Grey threads and brown
pursued my needle’s leaping fish
to form a river that would never reach the sea.”
– Carol Ann Duffy, “Penelope,”
Almost two months have passed since
the morning you walked a man to the train
stop by your apartment, the shelter-in-place
order still some days away. You sat by
the lake for a bit on your way home,
watching the small gray waves and
floating gulls above a still winter beach.
You’ve always preferred Circe to
Penelope, never wanted to wait for
someone to return or not, and that’s still
the case, but you have a newfound
respect for Penelope’s nightly unraveling
of the shroud she wove anew each day,
can barely bring yourself to pick up
what you drop on the floor or hang up
the clothes at the foot of your bed.
In Penelope and the Suitors by Waterhouse,
the queen of Ithaca is intent on her work,
biting off a thread from her shuttle
while suitors loom, insistent, in the windows
at her back, one holding a bouquet
of flowers while another plays a lyre.
Fifty-six days have passed in your
apartment, and you’re wearing your
favorite black dress, having a third Bloody
Mary on a Tuesday afternoon, sun
from the window warming your face,
alone as Circe on her island,
alone as Penelope surrounded by men.
John William Waterhouse, Circe Invidiosa
Circe Invidiosa
“It was easy enough—
a thought called them
from the sharp edges of the earth”
–H.D., “Circe”
You tell a man that poison
green is your power color,
and he buys you a fan with
a tassel on it in exactly
that shade. This color makes
you think of Waterhouse’s
Circe Invidiosa—Jealous
Circe—your favorite
of his three depictions.
In it, she is wearing a gown
that’s greenish-black, her
shoulders bare. Her feet
are in water and she’s tipping
a bright potion out of a bowl.
Her power catches you by
the throat and grips tight, and
each morning in the shower,
you hold your own hands before
you like a chalice, gathering water,
imagining that you too are
casting a spell. You ask for power
and sometimes you have it.
The second time you saw
this man, you told him you
wouldn’t turn him into a pig,
that you wouldn’t turn him
into anything. But even as you
said those words, you knew
this was a promise that no one
can keep because aren’t we
all inevitably transformed?
Always a Love Poem (Valentines 2021)
Jennifer Finstrom: Poetry and Divorce
Jennifer Finstrom and Elizabeth Kerper
Jen Finstrom’s Confessions Through Poetry at 14East
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