Sharon Olds teaches poetry workshops in the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at New York University. Her next book, called Odes, hopes to be out September 2016.
I’d Ask Him for It
Sharon Olds
Rarely, my ex would sing to me,
I don’t know what scale he used, maybe Arab,
seventeen steps to the octave, or Chinese,
five. It was microtonal a-
harmonic, its staff was of the bass clef,
but I don’t know . . .