"Because Your Wife with the French Name Gets You all the Other Nights" by Heather Foster

Heather Foster

Heather Foster

Heather Foster lives on a 144-acre farm in Tennessee with her husband, kids, and Ozzy the heavy metal rooster. She writes in the back half of a welding shop or in the cab of a combine. A former pre-med lab rat, she is currently completing her poetry thesis in the MFA program at Murray State University. Her poetry and fiction is featured or forthcoming in PANK, Monkeybicycle,Anderbo, Cutthroat, and Country Dog Review, among others.

Because Your Wife with the French Name Gets You All the Other Nights


Sometimes in the half asleep
dark you speak French to me,
get me dreaming, the syllables
lazy, the softness in the back of
your throat to say things like,
Ma fleur du venin,
de méfait belle que je désire.
The morning after is easy—
breakfast, and a grocery list
scribbled in French—
des poires, du beurre, du sucre
you make me a tart.
Days later, you send flowers,
I sign the release, above the first “e”
in my name, I stroke back
and forth, till I break the page,
with a wanton accent grave.