Tuesday Poem: From The Notebook

 

Cinderella's Daughter

Nights, when the servants were

deeply asleep, my mother

traded her lace for homespun,

her crown safely

back in its lock box,

my father abed  and dreaming,

adrift on the ship of state.

I watched her in secret

as she danced with the broom,

bent and crooned to the dustpan,

fondled the stiff little bristles

on the idle head of the scrub brush.

Work called to her, it was

her secret, her benediction,

kneeling in the ashes,

sweeping the hearth

cleaner than it sometimes

already was, scrubbing

the stones in the hallways

till they sang a hushed

song of gratitude

beneath our feet.

All of life's ugly voices

gradually silenced by her hands,

rosy from running water,

dancing over every surface,

making me a tapestry

that told the complicated

story of her entry into Paradise.

Tuesday Poem: Previously published by Writing Women in 1997

The Year of the Plum-Colored Bathing Suit

her breasts were blue-veined

porcelain and full of milk

for the baby.

She waited for him to notice

them spilling, a soft waterfall,

wished he would ask her

to put marmalade on them at tea-time.

All summer she offered him sweet rolls,

hoped he would cup her lightly

in long china fingers.

Instead he stayed out of the water, reading,

or changing the baby's diapers,

or teasing their oldest boy

unmercifully.

Tuesday Poem: an earlier version published in Footwork 1987

My Mother Always Seemed Bigger Than Me

her face as round as a Russian Doll’s.

She even wore a babushka when it rained.

And her mother bigger still, enveloping her

in the do’s and don’ts of the world,

all the frowning dimpled faces and stocky bodies,

with wagging stubby fingers: No, no, no.

And my grandmother’s mother before her,

wearing cabbage and bacon grease perfume.

All the way back to Holland they go,

All of them closing over me, each 

generation more massive than the last.

All of them cast from a similar mold,

their arms painted on, akimbo over aprons,

faces barely holding in the rage they feel,

about working, working, always working

for children who don't appreciate.

O lineage of matriarchs, who tucked
your sheets too tight, I see you floating 

above me as my shadow comes down,

round as a bell jar,  grim as the final 
hour of night over my daughters, 

passing on that darkness, 
whether I want to or not.