The Consolation of Philosophy

My philosophy walks around inked
with all the tattoos I ever decided against:
delicate vine at her nape, biceps twined

with lapis patterns and fiery-scaled dragons,
lucky coins scattered across her belly, the sign
of Pisces at her hip. My philosophy curses

like a sailor, too, and doesn’t mind
bringing strangers home—I stumble from my room
at midnight, blinking, to find her pressed

against the kitchen counter, someone’s hands
in her hair, his mouth against hers—
not that my philosophy is easy.

Some mornings she chain-smokes.
“Do as I say,” she says,
“not as I do.” And some mornings

she sits around in her robe reading Boethius,
laughing. She says the problem
with philosophies today is they have no flair

for the dramatic, no sense of style.
She says philosophies today don’t know
their business. Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking up

some new tattoos. “Does it hurt?” I ask.
“Not at all,” she answers, smiling, stroking
the unmarked flesh of my wrist. “Pain

is your prerogative”—as a black bracelet
of barbed wire seeps into her,
and a serpent spirals up her calf.

Karin Gottshall lives in Middlebury, Vermont, and has taught writing at Middlebury College and Interlochen Arts Academy. Her first book, Crocus, was published by Fordham University Press in 2007. Recent work appears in Field and Harvard Review.

“The Consolation of Philosophy” appears in our Autumn 2010 issue.