Spite Face

BY Martha Zweig

I duck by with my no
nose in the air. Aloft now, as I
was never, my nose
has cut me off

without a scent, for I
(just as in if thine eye )
Biblically offend its inspiration.
I suppose it has rarefied.

I, who cannot tell chopping
onion today from any other
fierce tears, say a week’s July
dead dragged up & counting,

beg pardon: my features’
mien repugnant the more
than usual, though polite
company hasn’t arrived

to say so, insist so, pointing out
damned Spot, bad dog, & what a nose
didn’t that one have, for the drugs,
news, carrion & the privates.

 

Biography

MARTHA ZWEIG‘s third collection, Monkey Lightning, was recently published (Tupelo Press, 2010). Her previous work includes Vinegar Bone (1999) and What Kind (2003), both published by Wesleyan University Press, as well as a chapbook, Powers (The Vermont Council on the Arts, 1976). Zweig has received a Whiting Award, Hopwood Awards, Pushcart nominations, and other honors. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Progressive, Northwest Review, Poetry, Pequod, Boston Review, The Paris Review, The Gettysburg Review and Notre Dame Review.

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