Jessica Abughattas
First Marriage
I’m not one thing.
I’m changing all the time.
My long hair was modest.
It covered everything.
By my standards, it was a field.
Recurring dream of hidden places.
In a beat-up cottage we went
in circles tied together. Delusion: I thought
you could, but wouldn’t. You don’t know
a thing about a November full of mornings
in my mother's kitchen. Washing all her dishes.
I never wanted to be anyone’s nagging wife, mending
and wading like a ghost in the herb garden. It happens
to the best of us. You find an electric bull of a man,
latch on and cling until he throws you off.
Honey, I’m retired from the rodeo.
The house is on a street in the past where I left it.
I drove by today in daylight:
The vines are overgrown.
I saw one zinnia.
Your tools are strewn across the lawn.
The sunflowers came back.
Jessica Abughattas is a poet of Palestinian heritage. Her first book, Strip, won the 2020 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize selected by Fady Joudah and Hayan Charara. A Kundiman fellow, her poems appear in Guernica, Lit Hub, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere.
Return to November 2022 Edition
I’m not one thing.
I’m changing all the time.
My long hair was modest.
It covered everything.
By my standards, it was a field.
Recurring dream of hidden places.
In a beat-up cottage we went
in circles tied together. Delusion: I thought
you could, but wouldn’t. You don’t know
a thing about a November full of mornings
in my mother's kitchen. Washing all her dishes.
I never wanted to be anyone’s nagging wife, mending
and wading like a ghost in the herb garden. It happens
to the best of us. You find an electric bull of a man,
latch on and cling until he throws you off.
Honey, I’m retired from the rodeo.
The house is on a street in the past where I left it.
I drove by today in daylight:
The vines are overgrown.
I saw one zinnia.
Your tools are strewn across the lawn.
The sunflowers came back.
Jessica Abughattas is a poet of Palestinian heritage. Her first book, Strip, won the 2020 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize selected by Fady Joudah and Hayan Charara. A Kundiman fellow, her poems appear in Guernica, Lit Hub, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere.
Return to November 2022 Edition