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A poem for my poetry class that I'm writing a close reading on.  It's from our book,The Best American Poetry 2010, and it's by Denise Duhamel (I just went online and read a bunch more of her poems--great narrative poems... just like the kind I want to be able to do).

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I am on the outside now like my childless aunt

the one we all hated because my uncle doted on her

she didn't like children you could tell

and wore silk dresses that had to be dry-cleaned

how extravagant said my mother she's spoiled said the other aunts

who were busy in their polyester blends busy with their kids

I have a memory of this aunt eating bonbons

as I swung on a tire hung from a tree branch in her yard

my aunt didn't offer us any candy and that was just bad manners

even as a kindergartener I knew that

but now I have become that aunt

my sister-in-law wants my husband

to move in with her to take care of her children

and what do I know about suffering and divorces

and restraining orders what do I know about staying up all night

with a daughter with a fever

when I called about the $300 worth of extra cell phone charges

the woman at T-mobile said honey I hate to be the one to tell you

but there’s a number and she read my sister-in-law’s number

all the calls are to and from your husband’s cell

sometimes they’re on a couple of hours

they talked when I was at work

the woman said I’m sorry thinking my husband was having an affair

but the affair was with his sister and it wasn’t an affair really

it was therapy and my husband was the therapist

even though he isn’t a therapist

our niece wrote a one-act play in which a man is being abused

by his wife who is a witch a demon

and the man’s kindly sister is trying to help him escape

I know you are being abused as I was once too the heroine says

my sister-in-law thought her brother was abused because he vacuumed once

I guess she thought he was doting on me

my husband thought he was abused because I asked him to cook dinner

when he didn’t have a job for over a year

I understand why my aunt never fought back

because once you are labeled as someone terrible

there is nothing much you can do to change your reputation

there is no way to prove your kindness

if you are nice everyone will think you are phony trying to trick them

and if you are cold well it just confirms their theory

sometimes my husband disappears from this story

only to come back to say please don’t call my sister

the other woman

it grosses me out

OK I won’t

our niece got an A for her play

portraying me as ugly and cruel

and the teacher thought it was so realistic

her theater class even did a staged reading of it

a loud eighth-grade girl playing a shrill me

a small eighth-grade boy cowering as my husband

sometimes my uncle disappears from this story

only to come back

with a giant stuffed animal for me

and a kiss on the cheek for my aunt

when I stole two of her chocolates

and poked holes into the rest left in the box

she knew enough not to complain

and kept her squashed candies to herself.