The wives of the diplomats
Invade Poland
When no one’s watching
They put on their hats
And suck in enough breath
To raise and lower their shoulders
Only to meet their makers
In basements
Like the Romanov’s
But before that
There’s colonialism
And condescension
From their husbands
The diplomats
The men named after hardware instruments
And tennis moves
And old backgammon players
That nobody’s ever heard of
The wives of the diplomats
Wave to somebody
Out of windows
With drawn curtains
Plastic fingernails
That can’t be broken
Terrible accents
From terrible places
That nobody wants to visit
And nobody
Wants to go back to
One challenges the other to a duel
In the hopes
Of being shot
Only to find herself
Laughing so hard
She falls to the ground
And feeds the dirt
With her amusement
One of them finds a boardwalk
And waits on it
For somebody to come find her
But nobody ever does
Her husband remarries
Because he finds a woman
Who has no urge
To wait anywhere
For anyone
And something about that
Appeals to him
Even though waiting
Is one of the loveliest things
A person can do
For another person
The other wives
Attend the wedding
The way one would attend
A funeral
And in some ways
That’s exactly
What they’re doing
Your wedding
My funeral
Your graduation
My expulsion
Your diplomat
My dragon
Your wife
My husband
Your life
My life
Who’s life is it anyway?
It’s a play
They catch
When they’re in the city
Two seats
Dead center
Polite applause
To signal
The intermission
The wives of the diplomats
Gather in the ladies room
To plan their escape
A truck is parked outside
And a plane is on the runway
And a country nobody’s ever heard of
Will offer sanctuary
Provided the wives
Tell state secrets
Or make them up
But the problem is
They love their husbands
So they return
To their seats
Love hasn’t trapped them
It’s just reminded them
That ‘Too Late’ is the easiest place to live
And it’s near
Just about everything
And as the play begins
Its thirty-fourth act
They turn their heads
To stare
At these powerful men
Who will all die
Ordinary deaths
The lights go down
The actors speak
And somewhere on the boardwalk
A woman stares at the ocean
And wonders what could possibly be
On the other side
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