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THE WIDOWS GO TO WATER AEROBICS
read by Cindy Matsakis

We begin with the shoes, which have names like Oracle,
Power, Courage.
Next the brassieres releasing their perfumed guests,

a downward roll of waistbands, socks,
a second’s nakedness.
Then the upward strapping-in, wiggle and hoist,

buttocks to colorful cups, the adjusted cleft.
At pool’s edge fear’s mimic:
toes boggle the ladder, inch by inch our stomachs

lowered like ordnance into the water, and then we are
launched,
a flotilla of cleavage and hairnets,

arms held akimbo by miracle bagels, styrofoam
dumbbells at twenty
a pop. We’re told to resist, to turn and cross-

country and make the butt burn, to pump our flesh
into flume,
to scissor and scum, and finally to rest,

to bat down the bubbles and come to rest.

How long have we been suspended? How long will
we dangle
before we unhook and follow the heel,

then the heart, down to the husbands castled below?
Such tender reunion!
They see us upwards, a kind of prophesy,

shipwreck from another world, and for a moment we are
younger, lighter,
held in our zeros, girdled by foam.

Too soon the instructor’s---
Come back, come back ---
waving us out of our azure forgetting.

Come back, come back to the dry weight of time,
back to the ladder’s cold staircase,
our silver reversals as, water to air,

we climb out of one grave and into another,
the groove of our straps
trenched in our shoulders,

their kisses still stinging our heels.