nancy keating

I want her life


that is your wife’s life
not the globe-trotting hobnobbing life
of the urban chardonnay academic
not the good-hearted volunteering life
of the public gardener
not even the internet fame you get
with bios and headshots and
adoring magazine interviews
no actually all I really want
is the life she’s shared with you
the 30 years sleeping with you
every night like spoons
your hands securing a together life
the way we always used to do
the 30 years of your voice in her ear at night
and not a sound in mine
the 30 years of you washing her back
the scratchy circular caresses
with loofah and foaming soap and hands
your hands again
you started that with me
remember?
I heard her read a poem about
you washing her back
that could have been my poem
instead of this one


Nancy C. Keating lives on Long Island , New York . She has participated in workshops with Manhattan Writers and Artists, Amherst (MA) Writers and Artists, Brooklyn Writers and Artists, the Long Island Poetry Collective and the Farmingdale Poetry Group. She hosts a series of readings for the Babylon Village Arts Council. Her work has been published in the 2009 and 2008 editions of Long Island Sounds: An Anthology, Barbaric Yawp, Bellowing Ark, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Xanadu, Abbey, Hidden Oak, Iodine Poetry Review, Poetyr Magazine, Main Channel Voices, Pegasus, “The PEN”: Poetry Explosion Newsletter, JAW Magazine, Shoreline, and The Lake Street Review.