Gyroscope Review is celebrating National Poetry Month with a Poem Renaissance, a review of previously published poems looking for new life and new views. Every day through May 20th, a new poem to fall in love with all over again.
“You May Want to Marry My Husband”
by Susan Kress
We are at breakfast, he and I, enjoying Sunday
tea and buttered toast, browsing sections
of the newspaper. Here’s a thing, he says, a letter
written by a dying woman. She’s listed
all her husband’s assets, commending him—
a handsome, smart, kind, loving, pancake-
making man—to some future spouse.
I sip my cooling tea and do not offer any future
letter of my own as I watch him lick his
forefinger to mop up toast crumbs—
see beyond him through the window heavy
heads of peonies bowed down from summer storms.
Here’s the thing:
I most surely do not want my husband
to be happy without me. If I die first, he’s got
to miss me every minute (my cold feet, chili meat
loaf, helpful interruptions when he tries
to make a point.) No one else can wear my opal ring,
put on my oven mitts, warm my yellow teapot.
When he turns the pages to another section,
looks up again, he’ll see that I am gone—
my orange chair quite empty—our cross-
word puzzle on the table, one clue left to solve.
Outside, the peonies have straightened up a bit.
With stakes, they’ll last another day or two at least.
Originally published in New Ohio Review, Issue 30, Winter 2022.
“You May Want to Marry My Husband” was inspired by a column in the Modern Love series, The New York Times, March 3, 2017. Susan Kress was born in England and now resides in Saratoga Springs, New York. She has poems published in Nimrod International, The Southern Review, New Ohio Review, Salmagundi, New Letters, La Presa, and other journals. You can find her on Facebook.
Don’t forget to read the Spring 2025 Issue, available now, online and in print
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