Poem of the Week: Meg Eden

     

                      

   

factory work: made in china.  

I look for a man's hand inside

the folds of my purse, and find

a pattern that recalls a finger print, the way

skin winds in on itself, always originating

at some inner point that cannot be explained

or defined. I trace the pattern with my index. 

I find something woven into the bottom, a flap

like Chinese newsprint. I know that there are accidents

in work, and that today is no different

than the days two hundred, fifty, four, years ago.

If something is caught, it is bound

and obligated to remain in a type of marriage,

and a man lost his finger for a bag, somewhere-

I carry his finger alongside me as I walk, I carry

his loss in the same folds that I carry my desires,

that I must be in a constant state of justifying

his loss. I do not buy a new purse.

I do not let harm fall over its cheap straps. 

-Meg Eden 

Used by permission.

 

Meg Eden has been published in various magazines and anthologies, including Rock & Sling, The Science Creative Quarterly, anderbo, Gloom Cupboard, and Crucible. Her collection "Your Son" has received The Florence Kahn Memorial Award. Her collection "Rotary Phones and Facebook" is to be released in June 2012 by Dancing Girl Press.

 

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