Brian Fanelli’s most recent poem to appear here was Where Poetry Exists (April 2012).

The Plot
By Brian Fanelli

He says, honey, let’s go, and she follows to Fred’s,
the High St. bar where men bark at TVs like Romans
seated before a bread and circus show, howling and drooling
at blood sports. She sips her martini, then circles the rim
with her red fingernail while her husband sucks down shots
like a man 20 years younger, pounding the table for more.
She wonders if Roman women followed to stadiums or stayed home
scrubbing floors, and which was worse. She has been his habit for 10 years,
10 years he came home with booze breath, a cigarette 
stench. She plots how best to leave him,
maybe slip a note under his pillow, or shout and stomp out,
though dressed in cymbals, leaving him to cook with clumsy
hands, to flip through recipes and beg
for an easy meal because she learned
there is more to life than this.