This is the third act. I’ve already had my “mad scene”
and frightened away the chorus. Your wife and I
are pushing swings in the backyard, wiping noses
and counting on our fingers who wants hamburgers
and who wants hotdogs. We’re warming our hands
over our burning lives and taking the kids
to Dairy Queen. So how could I tell her that once
you were the snake that whispered, flicking
your tongue into my ear. You were a wooden steed
full of cavernous dark, so charming
that when they opened the gates of the city for you,
you kicked off this catastrophe. By the time your wife
says to me, I still don’t know what happened,
months have passed and I have grown
wise enough not to tell her.
Kate Hubbard is a full-time poet moonlighting as an administrative assistant in the Yale School of Medicine. She has an MFA in poetry from New England College. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry, Rattle, The Florida Review, Salamander, North American Review, and New Ohio Review, among others.