Cindy Veach \ Spring 2015

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The Other Woman

My grandfather did not come back
instead he sent his girlfriend knock
knocking on the door to ask please.
My mother, age two, peek-a-booed
with this visitor in camel hair coat
with painted nails.  And my young
grandmother in her thin house dress,
a pocketful of rosary beads, gold plated
crucifix tap tapped on her collarbone
like a metronome.  For she believed  
believed. Read her Maryknolls, went
to daily mass, confessed to the gauzy man
shadow who at the end mimed his blessing,
making of his hand a steeple that knifed the air
she breathed as he pronounced her penance--
which could erase every black mark
but one. No, no, not for any number
of Our Fathers. This she knew,
knew and never questioned
even at the moment the softly
made up other woman stood before her
both feet firmly planted on the threshold,
mouthing--please.

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This Threshold He Did Not Carry Her Across

Evil spirits, in a last-ditch effort to curse the couple, hovered at the threshold,so the bride had to be lifted to ensure that the spirits couldn't enter her body through the soles of her feet. —The Knot

Not literal this threshold, two parts wild animal--
something to be wrangled with--one part fir,
smattered with dents, and she a sucker
for first impressions, let him break her
hymen, spooling blood, the only one.  Fir,
a soft wood,  pale yellow, some would say
wan, the grain and knots right at the surface,
ill suited for the soles of shoes coming
and going, mostly the cursed going.

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Cindy Veach’s poems have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, North American Review, Chicago Review, Prairie Schooner and are forthcoming in The Journal and others. She was a finalist for the Ann Stanford Prize, and the recipient of honorable mention in the Ratner-Ferber-Poet Lore Prize and the Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize. Her collection, Thimbleful, was the runner up for the 2014 Zone 3 First Book Prize.