It ain’t heavy, it’s my purse

By Marge Piercy

We have marsupial instincts, women
who lug purses as big as garbage igloos,
women who hang leather hippos from their shoulders:

we are hiding the helpless greedy naked worms
of our intentions shivering in chaos.
In bags the size of Manhattan studio apartments,

We carry not merely the apparatus of neatness
and legality, cards, licenses, combs,
mirrors, spare glasses, lens fluid

but hex signs against disaster and loss.
Antihistamines – if we should sneeze.
Painkillers – supposed the back goes out.

Snake bite medicine – a copperhead
may lurk in the next subway car.
Extra shoes – I may have to ford a stream.

On my keyring, flats I used to stay in.
a Volvo I traded in 1985, two unknown doors
opening on what I might sometime direly need.

Ten pens, because the ink may run out.
Band-Aids, safety pins, rubber bands, glue,
maps, a notebook in case, addresses of friends

estranged. So we go hopping lopsided, women
like kangaroos with huge purses bearing hidden
our own helplessness and its fancied cures.