As Joyce Freedman shows in this delightful poem, sometimes, to women, men appear to be inexplicably simply creatures.
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Shopping
Joyce Freedman
We agree to shop together
his needs are simple—
brown shoes like the last pair
and corduroy trousers,
brown.
We buy his five-minute shoes
and ten-minute trousers.
Done, he says, let’s go home.
No, that’s not how it’s done
I want to reply
but I’ve lost the power of speech.
I’m missing the leisurely coffee
where girlfriends gather to talk about dresses,
the feel of textures, the colour of lipsticks
and shoes, glorious shoes
(not brown).
Meekly I follow him, my willpower crushed
by his whistling. I stop to grab a lipstick
that makes me look anaemic.
At home, he waltzes around in
his new clothes. I want to break
his velvety legs and jump on his toes.
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Joyce Freedman is an Aussie poet whose poems have been published in Quadrant magazine among others.
Image by airamg
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