Poem: The Waterfountain Woman

by Tristan
  
I got the broken woman,
The one-armed hunchback,
Along with her immortal thirst
Hanging above the fountain,
The water frozen in St. Louis Arch
Just the way he carved it. No one ever told me
If she was broken in the carving
Or in the shuffle of cardboard boxes:
Den to cellar to attic across winters.
She pulls her shawl closer
With her good hand.
Another woman is under glass,
Somewhere,
My grandfather's elegy,
With both arms bracing her corn husk form
As she stoops for a drink of water.
But I got the broken woman.