Twelfth Night

His first infidelity was a mistake, but not as big As her false pregnancy. Later, the boy found out He was born three months earlier than the date On his birth certificate, which had turned into A marriage license in his hands. Had he been trapped In a net, like a moth mistaken for a butterfly? And why did she--what was in it for her? It took him all this time to figure it out. The barroom boast, "I never had to pay for it," Is bogus if marriage is a religious institution On the operating model of a nineteenth-century factory. On the other hand, women's lot was no worse then Than it is now. The division of labor made sense In theories developed by college boys in jeans Who grasped the logic their fathers had used To seduce women and deceive themselves. The pattern repeats itself, the same events In a different order obeying the conventions of A popular genre. Winter on a desolate beach. Spring While there's snow still on the balcony and, In the window, a plane flies over the warehouse. The panic is gone. But the pain remains. And the apple, The knife, and the honey are months away.