“Women, women, the whole house stank of them,”
Plath wrote in girlhood journals; I’ve mapped a drive
Through Wellesley streets reddened by fallen leaves
To find where she’d lived with Aurelia, dreamed
Of Daddy rising from Azalea Path,
Coming back to buy her pretty dresses.
Betrayed again, she honed words into scythes
That still draw blood: grayed Hughes arrives in Boston
The next month for a lawsuit; called “Murderer”
By those protesters frothing with old rage,
He’s so handsome on TV my knees water.
“Take us away from here,” two daughters sang
In white suburban houses, dads absent,
Hoping to lure princes, sex our gaudy bait.