Diane Gage

Reading Anne Sexton

Amid the dull whine of leafblowers
by which this block sets its ordinary clock
a drama occurs. My neighbor Leon
is felled by a stroke. His Avon lady
wife Marcy dresses up to walk up
the hill to the hospital. Meanwhile,

I sit here in the insulation called
not-my-turn and contemplate
Anne’s similes and metaphors: Snow
White’s “cheeks as fragile as cigarette
paper, ” dwarves “little hot dogs.”
I take Marcy some zucchini soup,

a rising to another’s emergency
against the day that I’m the emergency,
the one straining at the tearing ...