Your Husband Drives Me Home By Kristin Garth

Your Husband Drives Me Home 


The years I babysit, I cannot drive. 
Dad’s plan to keep me both alive & safe
wretched, in-waiting wife & waif.  Deprive
me of any temptation or mistake--
protect a virtue, his prerogative 
to take, like trust. I’m 18, older men, 
like him, eyeballing lace outlines furtive,
pretending to listen, requisition
movements of lips with questions, suggestions 
of syllables, before wives, audition,
midnight date night teenage assignation
inside of cars compliant & conditioned.
There is not a man who leaves me alone, 
but you will have your husband drive me home. ​

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Kristin Garth is a poet from Pensacola and a sonnet stalker.  Her sonnets have stalked magazines like Five: 2: One, Glass, Anti-Heroin Chic, Occulum, Drunk Monkeys, Luna Luna, TERSE. Journal and many more.  Her chapbook Pink Plastic House is available from Maverick Duck Press, and she has two forthcoming: Pensacola Girls (Bone & Ink Press, Sept 2018) and Shakespeare for Sociopaths (The Hedgehog Poetry Press Jan 2019).  She also has a full length upcoming Candy Cigarette from the same press in April.  Follow her on Twitter:  (@lolaandjolie), her weekly poetry column (spidermirror.com/the-sonnetarium) and her website (kristingarth.wordpress.com).

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