Poem: My mother's kitchen

[sarahmichigan]

The assignment was: write a poem about your mother's kitchen. (It helps if you actually draw the kitchen first, with crayons!) Put the oven in it, and also something green, and something dead. You are not in this poem, but some female relation--aunt, sister, close friend--must walk into the kitchen during the course of the poem.


Thanksgiving, the headless
Bird on the counter
Apples, oranges, and
Cranberries
Ground by hand
For holiday relish

Aunts and uncles bustle in and out
But my cousin disappears
When it's time to do the dishes.

The curtains with
Cartoon citrus fruit, the warm
Orange walls and sunny
Linoleum, the Christmas Cactus
In the window.

The oven door never
Closed properly
The food took longer to cook
But the escaped heat
Kept the kitchen steamy
On cold northern nights

Mom went "country kitchen"
In the 90s, and all the fabulous
Golds, avocados and warm oranges
Of my childhood were replaced
By blue and white gingham
And marching geese,
And a white linoleum floor
That could never stand up to
The tracked-in dirt from
All those shoes.

comments: I bent or ignored some of the rules, especially not putting myself in the poem. I'm not crazy about the way it turned out. there was something there I was reaching for that I didn't quite get to. I think I'll need a couple more drafts to be happy with this.