 | Sexy Rejection |
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Legs
Mark Halliday
In the last year of my marriage,
among a hundred other symptoms I wrote a poem called
"The Woman across the Shaft"—she was someone
I never met—she had long bare legs
on a summer night when she answered the phone
in her kitchen and lifted her legs to the table
while she talked and laughed and I tried to listen
from my window across an airshaft between buildings
and watched her legs. I doubt she was beautiful
but her legs were young and long
and she laughed on the phone
while I sat in my dark of dissolving faith
and I tried to capture or contain the unknown woman
in a poem: the real and the ideal,
the mess of frayed bonds versus untouched possibility,
so forth. Embarrassed now
I imagine a female editor
who received "The Woman across the Shaft"
as a submission to her magazine—the distaste she felt—
perhaps disgust she felt—I imagine her
grimacing slightly as she considers writing "Pathetic"
on the rejection slip but instead lets the slip stay blank
and then returns to another envelope
from a writer she has learned to trust,
crossing her long legs on her smart literary desk.
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**sigh*
Poets are sexy. Intelligent, thoughtful men are sexy. Introspective men are sexy. Mark Halliday is sexy.
Mark Halliday is at Wikipedia. Or …you might want to LISTEN IN. Or … even BUY his book.
I didn’t understand it, but I liked it.
Sexy, like you Angela. I’d love to chat with you while you had your bare legs lounging comfortably on a table, slightly parted, for comfort you know. 😉
Right hdb. Legs. Gams. Pins. Getaway sticks. A beautiful set of woman’s legs, slightly parted –signaling to men like a semaphore; or crossed at the knee, with a perhaps a toe down at the end, dangling a heel; or maybe emerging from a miniskirt or the bottom of a bikini — like two unexplored pathways that invite a long and wistful scan. Hosed or tanned, perched precariously on heels, or slathered in sun block at a public beach. There’s so much to be said for a woman’s legs. So much to give us pause.
Pathethic, eh?
“Pathethic,” PQS? Is that the moral code for a sub like me?