City Women
The woman who spends an hour
every morning with her makeup
and her mirror is my sister.
The sister who can bear abuse
from her male boss is my friend.
I see us on the streets, faces set
to endure, and I see we do,
in pieces and in pain; we hold
our anger down with muscles
and a will that would rattle the world,
turned elsewhere. The fat woman
who makes her own clothes and takes
too much space on the bus is my lover.
Jean Sirius is *this* close to being eligible for Medicare (just before they gut it, naturally). She keeps a garden and bakes bread, which would astonish the people she went to high school with.
