A word that could be made
easily into maid. A wife that does, fixes,
soothes, honors, obeys.
These lines contain the most condensed word choice and syntax of the poem, a tension that eventually opens into the deluge-like sentence that spans lines 13-24. As the turning point between the bitter, satirical Judy Brady quote in lines 8-11 and the poem's run-on ending, these lines are crucial. The first of the two sentences above contains a brilliant piece of enjambment—the breaking of a phrase across two lines—based on the homophones "made" and "maid." For a brief moment at the line break, the sentence reads: "A word that could be made." Given the poem's subject, this already evokes the homophone "maid," foreshadowing the wordplay before it even finishes. It also draws attention to the similarities between the two words' meanings: "made" is the past tense of "to make," a verb that resonates with wives' expected domestic chores, and a maid can be seen, through a feminist lens, as a woman who is made (i.e. forced) to be subservient. The double meanings reinforce each other, emphasizing the vicious circularity of misogyny: a woman is already seen as a maid even before she is "made easily" into one by an imbalanced marriage.
Line 12 subtly emphasizes this subjugation with the word "that." Grammatically, "who" should be used as a relative pronoun to refer to a person, and "that" refers to an inanimate object. We see "who" used properly in lines 9, 15, 18, 19, 21, and 22, suggesting that Limón's usage of "that" is intentional. "A wife that does," as opposed to "A wife who does," dehumanizes the archetypal wife, thus highlighting how she is dehumanized by patriarchy.
Lastly, the wife is reduced to a list of action verbs in this second sentence: "does, fixes, / soothes, honors, obeys." This hyper-compressed syntax erases the person-ness of the wife and values only her actions—what she makes in her duties as a maid. The last three verbs, "soothes, honors, obeys," all have the implied object of "her husband" as well, emphasizing the archetypal husband's shadowy role as the dominant member of the household. Patriarchy, like this line of the poem, renders this domination invisible by seeing it as the only natural way of things.
she who tears a hole
in the earth and cannot stop grieving
Surrounded by clear, straightforward images, these lines stand out for their vague melodrama. A rough, amorphous sorrow breaks into the poem momentarily, leaving the reader to interpret exactly what it means. On one level, tearing a hole in the earth from grief could refer to burying someone or something, or the directionless desire to destroy (things, other people, or oneself) when one is overwhelmed with grief. We imagine, perhaps, a woman who is screaming and clawing at whatever is in reach—in this case, the invisible walls of patriarchy that the speaker is chipping away at.
Readers of Limón's other poems might think of the similarly vague self-destruction in "The Leash," where the speaker imagines sucking poisoned creek water into her lungs. Both are surreal images with dark implications and burst into their poems like intrusive thoughts. Both refer to the earth, perhaps a nod to the climate anxiety with which Limón wrestles throughout The Carrying.
With different poems in mind, this line could also refer to gardening: in her poem "Trying," the speaker juxtaposes the fruitful labor of gardening with her own barren inability to become pregnant. A reader with this context might read these lines in "Wife" as a nod to the futility and shame that accompany infertility, and how restless and trivial gardening might feel in comparison.
