Edward Hopper's 'Eleven AM'
Two hours she has waited now --
He called 'round nine o'clock --
Beside the open window, the summer wind
Streaming over the velvet chair, her naked skin.
He likes her to be waiting for her like this --
Au naturel, he says, some phrase he got
From some speakeasy somewhere. So she sits
Unclothed, except for the dark brown slippers
She bought last year on a trip to New Orleans.
They watch her hair, he says, or so he thinks.
It's eleven A.M. She begins again to think:
'It's 1926 -- don't need no man,
Don't need to be wasting my time like this for him.'
But then she looks around the room again --
The bland chest of drawers that melts into the wall,
The lamp she's never bothered to light,
The chair in which she sits, the velvet of which
Has begun to chaffe her rear --
And she turns her head again to the window,
Where rheumy, sulphurous sunlight oozes in.
His car should soon be pulling up, and then
He'll come into her naked arms again
As sometimes he'll do on alternate Tuesdays,
Or whenever he fucking well feels like it, and say, 'Oh, baby,
You know I like them shoes.'
� 1997, 2002 Tony Whitt
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