Just For Fun in Suburbia

PoETry ThurSDaY has done it again! The prompt this week is right where I want to be...in the middle of a big fat lie. Standing on my head telling tales as big as pileated woodpeckers. I'm stalled on my novel. But I so want to write, to tell stories. To make a liar of myself and a believer of someone, anyone. I'll bet this makes sense to some of you! Just call me mom going mad in suburbia! And after this poem, please check out the post directly before this one! Also a big, fat lie! Or is it...

Just For Fun in Suburbia

The stove was not working today, so I ate my grilled cheese sandwich cold.
The horror continued as I discovered I had outgrown my apron.
Reaching both hands up and around my neck, another gruesome discovery,
my pearls remain at the jewelers, still being cleaned.

Persevere! Martha Stewart called from the inside of a porcelain teacup.
And so, I started a small fire using a rock and my son’s pet turtle’s shell,
burned one down in the medium size Teflon pan,
an experiment, to see if I could destroy the nonstick coat.
If I can’t have a fur coat, why should the pots and pans have all the fun?
No sooner had I started this fire, when the grilled cheese began to shake.
The pores of the wheat bread breathed in and out
in and out, and the sandwich began to speak.

Let me introduce myself.
I am your conscience.
If you don’t believe me,
just look out the window.

Here I paused to glance. Meanwhile, flames were shooting,
up and around my yellow kitchen, singeing the curtains,
sending the goldfish low as he could go in his blue pebbly watery grave.
The braided rug under my feet was untangling, strand
by rainbow strand of Moroccan yarn. I spied a tiny islander rise up
from the rubble, salute me and scurry out of the kitchen.

Out the window, sure enough, a mourning dove was speaking.
Believe the cheese, she cooed. Believe the cheese.
He knows of what he speaks.

I rushed to my daughter’s bedroom, pulled out her Dorothy shoes
size six, red glitter, low heel pumps. I sat in a cooling pool
of melted Home Depot tile, Aquascape Teal,
and took a giant bite of my flaming grilled cheddar.

Imagine my surprise when my tongue reared its pink head,
shouted, This is processed American you fool!
Next time go out for lunch!