The Lament of Curley’s Wife ~ poetry by Ruth Lexton

The Lament of Curley’s Wife

He said I was a natural for the pitchers
and he would write me when he got back to Hollywood.
That starlight smile he had. Coulda been in the movies.
Coulda had nice clothes and sat in them big hotels.
He saw I was a natural. Coulda worn a white ballgown
on the red carpet: silken shimmer on my hips
and diamonds in my hair, pitchers took of me.
An all them nice clothes like they wear.
I coulda been someone –

I coulda been someone but then I married Curley.
Ended up here. Soledad. That two-by-four house.
The barn is the only place I gotta go, horses rattling their chains.
Sure, I gotta husban’. It ain’t like I thought it was gonna be.
I never get to talk to nobody. Else he gets mad.
None of them cares how I gotta live. The guys call me tramp
and jailbait behind my back. Won’t let me play no horseshoes.
I can’t do nothin’ –

I don’t got nothin’. I don’t got nice clothes like the movies.
They make me twist my hair into fat sausage curls,
red nails, red lipstick, rouge like a tart.
They give me a red dress but it’s coarse and bunchy
and them mules with red feathers on for my feet:
thin soles the stones cut right through.
I don’t gotta name, not even Mrs –

I coulda had a name, coulda made somethin’ of myself.
I coulda had one of them gowns like Cinderella.
I shoulda been in a real movie.
In this one they’ll kill me.
They’ll say I was a natural.

Ruth Lexton is a teacher, writer and former academic. She received her PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and holds an MPhil in English Literature and a BA in History from Oxford University. She taught English and writing in the US before returning to the UK to teach at secondary level. Her poetry has appeared in Abridged, Shooter, Ink Sweat & Tears and Drawn to the Light Press, and is forthcoming in Ache Magazine. She won second prize in the Hexham Poetry Competition 2023 and was long-listed for the Aurora Prize 2023.