—: A Question :—
Did you ever lie in a man’s arms and hate him; And mend your children’s clothes And look out across the front lawn And wonder dully what you’d get for lunch? Did you ever walk along the boulevard On a hot afternoon Wheeling a baby,— A pretty golden haired baby That you’d like to paint But couldn’t. And it cried and had to be fed, And you hated it? Did you ever serve dinner to a silent man Reading a paper; And after washing up the dishes Sit alone and twist your wedding ring And hate it? And plan your next day’s work while Taking down your unkept hair And wonder why you looked so old and Wrinkled and so bent At thirty? And did you ever go to bed and wait,— And wait— And dread the arms you waited for,— Those hot and selfish arms of the man You lived with, Cooked for, claimed to love,— and hated?
Claire Bu Zard (p. 1917-21, etc.)
P: The Masses (1917), A: A Second Pagan Anthology (1919), Poetic Erotica (1921), etc.
A stunning poet, about whom almost nothing is known. Hands down, one of my favourite forgotten poems of all time.
Illustration by Maurice Becker, a well-known Marxist artist and illustrator whose work appeared in radical magazines like The Masses and The Liberator.
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