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The Pedestal Magazine > Archives > ISSUE TWENTY-EIGHT: Jun-Aug (05) > Poetry >Arlene Ang - Mistress Lin Counts Her Husband's Snores Through the Walls

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The first dozen are the softest, the way
his fingers grazed her cheek in prelude.
He was always careful when coming to bed,
the scar on his stomach kept averted from
moonlight. She never called out to him.

As his breathing settles, anger surfaces.
She imagines his mouth in the dark, lips
gray with opium and cracked, like earth
during a drought. There had never been
anything between them save the silence.

She listens carefully. The rattling from
his throat reminds her often of labor,
the contractions and the child that came
out dead. Sometimes he coughs in sleep
as if a heavy cord were around his neck.

Is it a trick of sound that she hears
him push away the covers? Outside
the window, persimmons bend their branches.
Overripe fruit falls in the wind. Again
and again she sees blood between her legs.









Arlene Ang lives in Venice, Italy where she edits the Italian edition of Niederngasse (http://www.niederngasse.com). Her poetry has recently been published in Megaera, Stride, The Hiss Quarterly, Avatar Review, Tattoo Highway, and Ghoti Magazine. Three of her poems have been nominated for the 2006 Pushcart Prize anthology.
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