Patrice Boyer Claeys
After 40 Years
Here’s the switch. I was once on top,
too deep and smart and sexy to fall
under anyone’s sway. And he was flat as the plains.
A milk- and corn-fed man. Open, honest,
straightforward—a 1950’s Catholic son.
I drew him in with hanky-panky
and an overwrought mystique. His easy style
pulled me to his sphere, and with his friends
I climbed in, ready to go wherever he drove.
I sat up front, thrilled and yet looking away.
My gossamer craved his ballast, that practical
bent that caulked the tub and booked the flights.
His mind roamed free from doubt, while my fuse
box sparked and smoked from frizzed wires.
And so we came together, not smoothly, but for life.
Now decades after holding back—scorning
what once attracted me, wishing for a twin,
expecting him to master what I had failed
to build—I am stunned in blunt shock
by love. This dumb struck force of yes.
This piece was originally published in LIGHT: A JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND POETRY, VOL. 05.
Pale Folded Hands
You appear in the cold clarity of a high voltage day. The vine leaves across the street flash like semaphores giving garbled instructions. Out front, the step holding my huddled form is painted the blue of old skim milk, curdled and flaking. The rented frame house, in which Weed and his skinny girlfriend fill the second floor with hoarse poker voices and fragrant smoke, cannot contain my swelling joy of subversion. I am oblivious to the cold. You alight from Old ’55 looking like a bitter orchid of ecstatic arching, a beautiful rare steak bathed in butter, the distillation of Tom Waites before he turned to carnival barking. I rise from the step, smiling, expectant, pumping and choking from too much valence. Thirty years later I am still pricked with the cold fingers of that day and all that my pale folded hands forbade me to carry into the future of borrowed eggs, flooded basements and the endless curving sweep of green couches.
This piece was originally published in LIGHT: A JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND POETRY, VOL. 05.
Patrice Boyer Claeys is a Chicago poet with five published collections. Her two most recent books with collaborator Gail Goepfert explore the world of fruits and vegetables through verse and photography. Patrice’s work has appeared in many journals, including Tupelo Quarterly, North Dakota Review, NELLE, The Night Heron Barks, Passion Fruit Review, Scapegoat Review and Tiny Moments Anthology. She has been nominated for both the Pushcart (2019) and Best of the Net (2014, 2019, 2022). More at patriceboyerclaeys.com.
