Do you Understand
Do you Understand
Original Text
Natalee Caple, The Semiconducting Dictionary (Our Strindberg) (Toronto: ECW Press, 2010): 89. PS 8555 A653S45 2010 Robarts Library
1My mother was a maidservant do you understand?
2My mother went cold and rotten inside
3Not able to say, "I need a rest"
4All she saw was space wanting the space to tighten
5She never lifted her eyes
6One day Hemingway
7Will bend a girl over a chair
8Remember how sweet the boys can be
9Lie down like some crushed pigeon
10Say it again my mother was a maidservant
11She never went to Spain
12She drank she split the blue vein
13Bathing only in the poem
14Half-human in the stone café
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2011
Rhyme
Form
Special Copyright
Copyright © Natalee Caple and used by permission of the poet. Authorization to republish this poem must be obtained from her in writing.