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2409 Jefferson Street
Port Townsend, WA
360-379-1086

Libby Wagner

Three Poems

The Good Wife

The morning after

you’d scoured

the cupboards,

drunk all you could

find—a little Absolut

I’d left in the freezer,

an old bottle of Bailey’s.

All of it.

I remember finding

the empty bottles

in the garage.

I stood there

considering,

finally picked them up,

one by one, hurled them

across the room,

splintered against cement,

the dirt and tools and scraps

of wood quiet, more so, after.

I lied, pretending

not to know, and you,

none the wiser, thought

they’d fallen off in your stupid

stupor. I always wanted

the violent crashing of glass.

--Libby Wagner

Before the Sentencing

I won’t say the prison yard sunsets

were more beautiful than others,

their fiery expanse spread out

over the Palouse, the science of air

pollution more intense, burning

just outside the razor wire. I won’t say

the men stood around in clumps

as I walked past, the distinct smell

of industrial disinfectant, bleach and

the blackest of sweats. I won’t say

the light cast a kind of peace over

the trimmed grass, the austere, lonely

buildings. Because I won’t imagine you

there, some other woman come to read

poetry, walking past you in the yard,

into the burning evening, her lavender

smell like clean laundry, like something

you’ll try to forget.

Oh, moon, oh, orange, orange moon rising

behind the power lines and beyond the fields

of green winter wheat, and beyond tomorrow,

your face before me, black half-moons under

your eyes, moons of our fingers pressed together

across bullet proof glass, moon of a long

summer without you; oh, love, orange moon

rising, the ironic sunset, the door’s

click-clack behind me. The walk to the car. The long,

long drive by moonlight, by darkness, in silence.

©Libby Wagner--Like This, Like That, 2002

What She Said

Blue Mary stands to the left

of the altar. Her arms are open,

palms slightly raised. She can’t

move from her place no matter

the number of candles aflame

at her feet. She’s here

because she said yes. Yes

to holiness, to God,

to light. She opened up

like a lotus, unblinking love.

Blue Mary’s lips are wooden,

her eyes half closed. First,

she said yes, then bowed

her head. Said yes

to the dust in her mouth

the day her heart breaks,

the word choked back in her throat.

©Libby Wagner --Like This, Like That, 2002