Fixture

Contributor: Jane Blanchard

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Son arrives for a tour
of dad’s new house
with dad’s new wife.

In the master bedroom
everything gets
more awkward.

Son points to the light
attached to the fan
suspended from the ceiling.

“What’s that?” he asks.

Dad tries to look blank
and says nothing
as the pause gets pregnant.

Wife infers, not ignorance,
but rejection, even ridicule,
in a former setting.

Son is left to wonder
about the power
of a woman on a man.


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Jane Blanchard lives and writes in Georgia. Her chapbook Unloosed is forthcoming from White Violet Press.