How can you be bi if you’re married to a man?
Through the muted arborvitae slides
early winter’s glycerin light, propelled
by a blue windstorm’s blister-bluster.
If you were with me on this side you’d see
a cove carved out of the bronzed branches,
see the ruby cardinal perched in the blow,
its call hush in the bustle-blur and gust.
On the other side, the view: just rusted hedge,
no bright bead of blood stuck to a fresh cut.
Carolyn Oliver’s poems appear or are forthcoming in the Massachusetts Review, Indiana Review, the Cincinnati Review, Radar Poetry, Beloit Poetry Journal, 32 Poems, Southern Indiana Review, Cherry Tree, FIELD, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the Laurence Goldstein Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review, the Writer’s Block Prize in Poetry, and the Frank O’Hara Prize from the Worcester Review, where she now serves as coeditor. Carolyn lives in Massachusetts with her family.