win–win

by Leonore Hildebrandt

                                            To sing of Wars, of Captains, and of Kings,

                                            Of Cities founded, Common-wealths begun,

                                            For my mean Pen are too superior things;

                                            Or how they all, or each their dates have run…                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Anne Bradstreet (1650)

no books but the bible

unless my brother smuggles them

under his coat     ––Arabian Nights––

we hear that vinegar makes porcelain skin

chambered      we practice

the art of fainting     a deadly pallor     

fervent tremble

you lace up my neat little waist––

Scheherazade woos the Indian Sultan

and I too could win     his mercy

a husband’s favors

her bodice

mined out from undergarments––

winnan      of Germanic origin:

to strive     contend     subdue      acquire

days are pockets     turncoat gifts

she lost a mile along the way

her property      stipulated

manly or unmanly

in marriage laws     favoring

favoring––

he strapped his belt

unfazed

to win her over

make her precious

delicately      unstable

merely a girl

forgone––

a flickering

hysteria     forgoing

ongoing

lost and fallen

for the market     spins them

marriageable

pure-faced angels––

vices are acquired elsewhere down

in boarded streets

like key rings      threaded

to keep order

vitrified

and pretty still

I rest in yellow light

my spheres obliquely

cast within      refracting––

a little walk

and now the winless spells

come easily

a hard      forgetting

heaved

into the air

young and precocious

she steals

into her father’s well-worth study

reads the forbidden novels––

to canter under lights

her ample dress draped sideways

one leg only      pressed

against the pony’s flank

with half-wrought messages

and yet her levelheaded poise––

a plain child    

prone to pale-faced fits

and nightmares––

father decrees      go stop the madness––

her dreams are wholly      winning

and exquisite

glittering

the sea today

has turned a windless flap

a rope-slack afterglow––

below the wind

a river grinds and carries sand

for seabeds

winnan:

to subdue and take possession of

the woman question––

its granularity

below the heights      tumbling      revolving

as afternoon

allays

carries on

* * * * *

"win-win" was first published in Mudlark Flash 70 (2012) https://www.unf.edu/mudlark/flashes/hildebrandt.html

Leonore Hildebrandt is the author of The Work at Hand and The Next Unknown. She has published poems and translations in the Cafe Review, Cerise Press, the Cimarron Review, Denver Quarterly, Drunken Boat, The Fiddlehead, Poetry Daily, and Poetry Salzburg Review, among other journals. A native of Germany, Hildebrandt lives “off the grid” in Harrington, Maine. She teaches writing at the University of Maine and serves on the editorial board of the Beloit Poetry Journal.