Still not June Cleaver
Warming up for NaBloPoMo! Must give props to The Polka Dot Witch for the idea of yellow gloves. She used the little beauties in a poem and I could not get them out of my head. Comments & critique much appreciated!
Messy Girl (a working title)
The yellow gloves at my sink
are not there. The women sitting
around my kitchen table are dead
poets and busy writers, their faces glow
not with furniture polish, spilled coffee
or maple syrup, but with the sheen
of airbrushing, touching up.
If I still cleaned my house
with no clothes, I would dust
my bare belly round and round
with perfection. Shove the dirt
of my days hard and fast
into my bellybutton,
and beyond
out through my spine
carpet sweep it back to the place
where filth tangled my braids
not my gnarled mind.
are not there. The women sitting
around my kitchen table are dead
poets and busy writers, their faces glow
not with furniture polish, spilled coffee
or maple syrup, but with the sheen
of airbrushing, touching up.
If I still cleaned my house
with no clothes, I would dust
my bare belly round and round
with perfection. Shove the dirt
of my days hard and fast
into my bellybutton,
and beyond
out through my spine
carpet sweep it back to the place
where filth tangled my braids
not my gnarled mind.
posted by jillypoet @ 10:52 AM
16 Comments:
I like this very much! From the dead poets and writers to the dirt shoved past the bellybutton. Wonderful details.
I like this. Evocative. We do miss the point so often and you remind us so well.
Cornfedtrouble: straightforward view of the ordinary
carpet sweep it back to the place
where filth tangled my braids
not my gnarled mind.
Oh this is fantastic. You have a great mind.
i'm so proud to have brought yellow kitchen gloves to their rightful place in contemporary american poetry.
just fantastic, had me glued till the last line :)
but girl you are clever.. this was lovely... i really had fun reading it!!!!
A fun and provocative read.
Wow. Such great imagery. Very nicely done.
An intensity builds as the poem unwinds, from yellow dish gloves to belly button lint. I like how you stop a sentence in the middle of the verse. I've been noticing that lately in other poems as well.
very cool. lots of great lines in there.
Super line breaks here.
I'm a little confused by "of airbrushing, touching up." In my read I was understanding that reading and writing had taken over the house (table space) instead of housework. So I didn't think the writers needed or wanted "touching up", and air-brushing is a painterly term. Not that you don't have good reasons to mix language up--you are a fine poet. But I am lost there.
The rest speaks buckets to me.
love it all! Very strange and interesting.
If I still cleaned my house
with no clothes, I would dust
my bare belly round and round
with perfection. Shove the dirt
of my days hard and fast
into my bellybutton,
and beyond
really really strong here.
bravo.
I find it quite alarming. The abruptness. What do the Germans call it, Stimmungsbruch? Violently breaking a mood. Reminds me of Heine. (You don't know me from Adam, of course, so you don't know that from me that's fulsome praise.)
You have done it again! (And now I can proudly proclaim to the world my house is in disorder for very good reason - I have your poem to prove it)
I understood the airbrushing and touching up to be the business of revision and rewrite.
Who was it that said that dead poets write dead good poems? Alas, I'm not qualified to comment!
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