Stepford Lives

housewife
get a life
a daughter yells
before she bails
out the front door
"maybe i will someday"
she whispers to the breakfast tray
then hurls it to the floor
the next-door neighbor’s clearly itching for some kind of affair
he’d like to prune you in the greenhouse and be your Fred Astaire
he’s waiting on an answer
waiting on an answer

the husband named honey with too much money
he sort of a jerk
he told her not to work
he said "Your life must be free
I wish I had time to watch the vines
to listen to the wind roll cross the chimes
and write poetry"
but he’s got a den in Manhattan that she knows nothing about
with powders and friends who wouldn’t fit in back home
on the couch
he’s waiting on an answer
waiting on an answer
he’s waiting on an answer
waiting on an answer

(we chased satan out of our front door)
(in the spring of 1964)
(told him not to come ’round here no more)

I’m in the basement with the gleaming screen
I haven’t been upstairs in days

the mama dramas and the ancient traumas
they never gave me the proper compass
to navigate that maze

my sister calls me Columbine
it’s the easiest cliche
i’m down here making the way out of no
way

Tags:
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