Red Scarf

The small pictures
the moments
of a red scarf
on the woman hanging
up a white sheet
a museum tableau reaching out
to a disappeared world

tells you nothing
of her quarrel
with her squinty-eyed, shrew-faced sister
-in-law or the black and blue marks
some husband left behind
The dis-
ease of public
life in this part of town.

Her neighbor’s black gates
are kept closed too
against prying eyes or
the knowledge

of sorrow
in another house.

Bio: Arlene Zide has had work published in a variety of journals in the US, Canada and in India such as Colorado Review and The Women’s Review of Books; in anthologies such as Kiss Me Goodnight; Where We Find Ourselves; and Rough Places Plain: Poems of the Mountains; her translations of Hindi poets have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, The Bitter Oleander, and in Language for a New Century, (Norton Anthology).