The Clocks in All the Novels Have Paused

By Corinna McClanahan Schroeder

It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!

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From low chairs in the grass, 
the heroines pass tiers 
of cucumber sandwiches 
and raspberry sponge cake. 
The usual characters have convened—
grown daughters in muslin 
and ribbons, heiresses yawning 
diamonds. Teenage housekeepers 
whose cupboard keys chime.
Governesses and quiet nieces 
weathering tempest minds. 
Clouds morph like a story overhead,
 
but the women pay no heed. 
They are on break from the uses
of narrative. Crumbs spilling 
from their lips, they don’t talk about 
the next scene or when their weddings 
will be. Not even the ever after, 
happily though it’s promised 
to be. For this hour, no one 
blushes, no one’s made 
to weep. The heroines just steep 
in the pale sun, and no narrator 
takes his stab at what they think.

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Corinna McClanahan Schroeder is the author of Inked, winner of the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize (Texas Review Press, 2015). Her poems have appeared in journals such as Blackbird, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, and The Southern Review. She lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches in the Writing Program at the University of Southern California.

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