In Defense of the Wife

by Veronica Silva

in a neat line, i hide my wives: butter, bread,
& butcher. i would rather age gracefully

than go under the wife. my slice is wived
to my peach pie; my crumb is wived

to my madeleine. my jammed printer
is stuffed with wives, their faces blank

like papermoons. i shake them out & find
the wives ripe with baby wives, already

sentenced to wife. i scrub a stubborn wife
stain out of the couch—

even the dog barks: wife wife wife! 
i wear gloves to feed him—once bitten, twice wife.

“good news,” my mother says on the phone.
“we seem to have a very short shelf-wife.”

that’s just the cycle of wife: wife & death.
i wake wife-like & shriek in the mirror—

always a wife, never a bride. but the wives
seem safe here: mostly they give

lectures & eat clementines & run in & out
of the house barefoot; they collect twigs &

do their lovework; at night, they lie in a heap
& their hair spreads like starfish. i untie the knot

of wives. they are still wives, except i no longer
believe what you have told me about the wives.

we make gowns like french puffs and our faces turn
sepia & copper & oaken. my mouth breaks open—

spill out rice & honeybees:
i, wife, take thee.

Veronica Silva is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Central Florida. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in PANK, The Acentos Review, The Blood Pudding, Luna Luna Magazine, and Pleiades. Veronica teaches community workshops with the Literary Arts Partnership, and she is currently an intern with Copper Canyon Press.