She Was the Only Redhead in Our Village

Hurry now. The furious
women on the wall

will hear. Their stage
dead—plans out

rot the peelings
in our mam’s one pot. Man

comes home—eats, beats
dust from his coat. Swipes the night

air from the room. Slips
inside me

while I pray.
What’s to explain?

In the day I close
the door, open

the oven: Place
my head. Dream. Say

you’re broke? Where
can you go? The egg

does crack—and sometimes
we must speak. So, yes,

I’d say
that when she locked

herself into
that shed

and draped
herself with

fire—
                         she

snatched that cunning
tongue right out the sky.

Lucy Anderton is happy to be here. She is raising her French/American daughter in a 500-year-old brothel in the south of France. She has work forthcoming in Tin House and Boston Review, and her collection The Flung You was published by New Michigan Press.