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Elise Powers
BAD LUCK
In those loaded dice days of divorce,
after he threatened to bury her in the woods,
after she smashed the smoothtop into shards,
after he force-fed her the spark
and watched her burn with a beer in his hand,
after she patched each bruise like a leaky roof,
knowing the storm would come again,
my mother tells me she has bad luck with men.
Bad luck, like a red sock washed with the whites,
a bird at the window tapping twice, spilled salt.
But you can’t call it luck when the whole deck
is rigged— as if misfortune, not men,
put her in the fire.