Another Triumph

Poems by Pamela Moore Dionne

Out walking today I met Fraulein Aptekmann. She was one of my friend's patients.
Now she is in love with him. All buttercups and bluebells, she transcends patience.

We are two among the many. It's tedious to be so stupidly young – mosquitos
drawn to the fluid of his genius. We become colleagues after we bend as patients.

Blessed is the one who can believe. She is to see him tomorrow evening at six.
I will see him in the morning. This is the mire into which we descend – his patients.

I didn't tell her I was meeting him. My stomach clenched with pity – not for her –
for myself. She was a kindled luminaria, I the shrew who pretends patience.

Their excuse is the same familiar I lived with for years. Mentor for girls with breasts
round as Cornish hens, he supervises her thesis. She has graduated to friend-patient.

I used to go to him at six – sometimes dragging my umbrella with its broken wing.
Sometimes waltzing over pavement – loved more than all the ascended patients.

It will be very cozy, she said, gloved hands pressed together against the velvet yoke
of her gown. My own hands a contained slap – I played content, patient.

Once, when my friend abandoned me, when he sent a letter to my parents saying they
should pay for his treatment of me, I wrote to Freud. Cruelty distends patience.

The rape of the Sabines was no work of fiction. Women live their lives
the property of power. Being female is the enemy of my friend's patients.