Erin Hoover

THE HEDGE FUND MANAGER’S FIRST WIFE

I have been in her house. Not the second
wife but the former publicity boss
who was, everyone acknowledged,
prettier than her husband. In a bouquet
of white roses, I was the ruscus. I traded
my labor for wages. I wasn’t bleeding,
but I wore a tampon to sit on her
white couch. She chaired the gala event
for my employer, a charity. One day
the hedge fund manager and his second wife
would pose for reporters behind a sheet
of dollar bills, uncut Washington
green. But this was then. Inherited
New York money bought their pirate ship
of windows floating three hundred feet above
Park Avenue. It bought our charity,
our group of women, and me, nearly
lowest of all. I dared not speak. A person
tiered beneath me had arranged
plates of canapés and fruit on the table
to later clear away whole, her work
accomplished between the ticks
of the clock. I tried to feel her presence,
invisible like my own, while the first wife
told us our ads should be in Town and Country,
Vogue, the Hamptons mags. The right
people, she said, couldn’t see us. I imagined
my life as her cat, weaving its body
around the clawed feet of her living room
table, my life as her table, polished
but otherwise unobserved. I’m not jealous
of any wife clinging to what ownership
she knew, nor of the hedge fund manager
in his capital-blue suit, who when asked
to serve a god even lower than money would
move, second wife on his arm, into place.

ERIN HOOVER is the author of two poetry collections, Barnburner (Elixir) and the forthcoming No Spare People (Black Lawrence). She is an assistant professor of English at Tennessee Tech.