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The Cenotaph

By Fanny Howe b. 1940 Fanny Howe Read the Q & A

I want to leave this place

unremembered.

The gas stove is leaking

and the door of the refrigerator

stained with rust.

The mugs are ugly

and there are only two forks.

The walls are black

and soft, the bed a balloon

of night-clothing.

The stairwell sloped

to a dragger’s pace.

There are big windows

with blind-slats dusty

and gray. Street life

goes all night and at dawn

freedmen shout and

laugh outside the kitchen.

Where does life begin and end?

In the lamb or the cotton?

My pillow is my friend.

Source: Poetry (December 2011).

Biography

Fanny Howe is the author of more than 20 books of poetry and prose. “If someone is alone reading my poems, I hope it would be like reading someone’s notebook. A record. Of a place, beauty, difficulty. A familiar daily struggle,” Fanny Howe explained in a 2004 interview with the Kenyon Review. Indeed, more than a subject or theme, the process of recording experience is central to Howe’s poetry. Her work explores grammatical . . .

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