Before my husband was my husband
he asked me what I had against wicker.
I said I didn’t like things to be strong
and fragile at the same time. The man
who would become my husband laughed.
He said, But someone could describe you
like that. Of course I had forgotten
until, tonight, my son told me
about the characters in his game: a giant,
a mage. One, he explains, is a glass cannon—
powerful, but he takes a lot of damage.
Someone could describe him like that.
I watch a reel of a saw halving an agate,
a wet clod in a man’s hands. None of us,
not even the stones, are just one thing.
–
Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University and co-edits book reviews for Plume. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, and Ploughshares. Her first collection of poems, Oddest & Oldest & Saddest & Best, is coming out in February with Orison Books.