Marianne Szlyk

Domestic Goddess with Aluminum Pots and Pans

 

After art by JoAnne Tucker

 

Barefoot, wearing orange,
the color my mother
hated, the thin woman
I wanted to be,
dances to high-pitched
music from the college
station I meant to play.

Today she boils hand-made
whole wheat pasta, uneven
strands and rock-hard pillows,
to serve with black walnut
pesto and wild flowers
from the woodlot in back.

Today she cleanses bright
blue tile with warm water
and white vinegar from
the coop in Medford,
the place she dances to
across the bridge.

Today she welcomes
the neighborhood stray who
is tired of harsh weather,
harsher boys, their mothers’
minivans. 

She does not think about
tomorrow (her station
won’t play that song),
go to the stylist who
wants her to try a perm,
wear the navy blue pumps
I must wear to work, or

think about aluminum,
the pots and pans she bought
at my mother’s yard sale
the year she lived near me,
in a cabin hidden
in someone else’s woods.

 

 

In Oregon, Among Flowers

 

A girl of the last century
strides
along the bike path,
past the goldenrod
the spiky chicory,  
and Queen Anne’s lace.

With a brick red anthology in her book bag,
she wishes she lived among the Romantics
walking twenty miles or more
through the car-free countryside.

Waiting for a walk light
in August’s brittle brilliance,
she remembers a minor poem
that her grandmother still recites from memory,
having learned it
by a river
brick-red with dye
at the beginning of the last century.

 

Originally published in Quill and Parchment as “Memories of Summer Rambles”

 

 

Evening on Washington Street

              

Walking where city blurs into suburb, 
she sees yards of red roses
and orange lilies. Women her age 
or older work in rich dirt 
while grandchildren play. 
Spanish phrases float 
in the breeze around her.

Yet she smells nothing but the sweetness
of laundry detergent and fabric softener:
the choking purple fog of lavender grit.

Just off the path she rejected,
a green, peppery scent prevails.
There she could breathe deeply. But
she chose the known. She didn’t
know where that path through woods
would have led her in twilight.

She knows the fog will dissolve
before she enters the square
and houses withdraw onto side streets.
She knows the white boxwood flowers
will smell like homemade soap, 
cleansing the night as it falls.

 

 

Originally published in Quill and Parchment.