CORPORATE SPOUSE

Tonight's agenda calls for catering
She must remember to pass the cheese ball and the macadamia nuts
Before negotiations resume
She must make sure her smile is appropriately lacquered

Next week is the Christmas Party
Before you know it the Annual Picnic
Her portfolio is clearly labeled
National Secretaries Day

She must be properly arranged
In a spare seat at the business brunch
She must be coiffed and varnished
Lines memorized and delivered on cue

She's accustomed to lingering in the shadows
Of skyscrapers and attaché cases
Her echo is ex officio
She's a glass of wine gone sour.

AN ELEGY TO MY ABDOMEN
In Memory of Anne Sexton's "In Celebration of my Uterus"

More is less
She stands before the full-length glass
Sucking in her gut
Searching for that hollow cave
Whose boundaries were the rib cage
And two sturdy pelvic bones

It reminds her of a window
You know the sort
The ones with cracked panes
And flaky grey paint

Or that can of imported Brie
Her son's future father-in-law blessed her with
The one whose lid exploded
Released an odor that insulted the air
Like the remains of last week's experiment
In Chem 101

It used to be a real kick
To pinch it
And get a low yield
Now the return on her investment
Is rich indeed
A spiraling dividend

Rolls and fistfuls
Of flesh
That feel like giant doughnuts
Left at yesterday's coffee break
Not time yet
To summon the mourners
Rehearse the dirge
Contact the crematorium
Or Your Friendly Embalmer
Not yet, but soon.

THE MOTHER-IN-LAW'S LAMENT

Did you ever meet the sort of girl
You wish your son had married
That pluperfect porcelain elf
Who'd fly fish on the shore
While he kayaked down the rapids
Or rafted the river's fork
Who'd match him mogul for mogul
In the skiers' steeple chase?

Who'd fire out five grand kids
Like a hyperactive cannon
Who'd iron his shorts
And starch his sheets
Who'd scour his toilet bowl
With zest

Who'd hitch her covered wagon
To the star of Sonny's needs
While churning out a cheese soufflé
Or tending the Eternal Flame
Beneath his cherries jubilee
An Elaine worthy of your Launcelot

The sort of girl who'd spot on cue
The paragon you produced
Who'd embrace each piece of spare advice
Like a chip from the Holy Grail
While pumping peas into Sonny's son
And vacuuming with glee

The sort of girl
Who'd recognize
The rights of prior tenants
The sort of girl
You could spend
The rest of his life with.

Suzanne Richardson Harvey is a member of the Academy of American Poets. For almost two decades she lectured in the English Department at Stanford University in Northern California. She is now retired.
In addition, for a semester Suzanne was a visiting lecturer in the English Department at the University of California at Berkeley, and for almost a decade she was an instructor in the publishing program at the University of California at Berkeley Extension.
Before that, she was an instructor at Tufts University in the Boston area, where she received her doctorate in Elizabethan poetry, specifically that of Edmund Spenser. Recently, in her retirement Suzanne was active in teaching at Diablo Valley College and at Emeritus College (continuing education for older adults) in the San Francisco Bay Area for almost a decade.
Her poetry has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Concho River Review, Mannequin Envy, Convergence Journal, Poetalk, Poetry Salzburg Review , SpeedPoets, Ascent Aspirations Magazine, Nthposition, Current Accounts, Poetic Hours, Splizz, among other venues.

Email: Suzanne Richardson Harvey

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