My New Wife

Have I shown you my new wife?
Look through the window there,
you’ll see her dig the flowerbeds.
Two years my last’s been gone,
fled to another man’s bed,
and leaving me with kids to raise,
though he’s decided she’s a bet
worth taking more than me.
Don’t blame the lad. Won’t take no shit,
just like my dad never did.
She’s mopping now; her brow, that is.
I’ll bet you’re wondering just why
a pretty thing like that would bet on me.
But it’s quite simple, so you’ll see.
She didn’t have much cloth,
and so I thought, why let it waste?
(My last wife’s clothes, that is.)
A whole wardrobe of chic
she hadn’t had the cheek
to take, given that I’d bought it so
she’d look good on my arm.
Then this new filly joins the farm.
Just seventeen, she was; of legal age,
won’t come to harm,
‘cause even if she blabs I’ll say
that she’s a grown up now,
and just you check her school records,
the little lying gobstopper,
the problem-case, the slut.
I’ve got them all upstairs,
a memory box packed tight
with beige folders, each labelled with
the name of some young lass
before she traded uniforms.
But I’m not one to let things waste,
not clothes nor food nor girls.
The wardrobe’s all hers now,
from summer frocks to party shoes
and cardigans to gowns,
detritus of my last wife’s love,
draped newly on the subtle bones
of this, my brand-new wife.
She came one night just like a dream
when I’d thought sharing beds
was now beyond what I could hope.
She’d fled her mother’s house
and wondered if I’d cope
where she had manifestly not.
And so we made our little pact,
progressively at first, a grooming of
the finer points needed.
You have no clothes? So take my wife’s.
A coldness in the bones at night?
So cuddle up with old Methuselah.
(Or was it Mephistopheles? I never knew
my Bible well enough.) And see there now,
the crisp October light as caught
in that old hat, an orange cat
among the straw. She’s grinning at us,
nervous-like, just like a good wife should.
The ‘70s design on that sun-dress
buries her teenage breasts beneath
the variegated flowers which
would strain to keep their shape
when stuffed with Last Wife’s tits.
I’ve lost a daughter, lost a son,
and lost a wife who wasn’t really mine...
But this wife’s new, I’ll raise her right,
and I of anyone should know:

I’ve raised her once before.