Poetry Issue 1
Carol Lynn Grellas
Housewife Doing Chores Wearing her Negligee
In morning hours she scours the sinks. One split
runs lengthwise along the glint of gold─
still the crack remains but the sheen around
porcelain amplifies the beauty in the chink between.
On a good day, her wrinkles disappear too.
The bed needs a going over. Somewhere behind
their wooden headboard hides a stray pair of panties
buried with dust bunnies and misplaced dreams.
The vacuum becomes her most reliable gizmo,
finding lost parts unseen.
If only his heart was as easily retrieved.
Her mother was never good at housework
and she wonders if this mania with cleanliness
is a delayed rebellion. Even her hair gleams
with vinegar rinsed twice, scrubbed, scented
of lemons. The tanned linoleum has nothing on her.
Heaven must be free of the scrutinizing eye,
otherwise best not to die.
From the windexed double mirror’s reflection, her dressing
gown cascades to one side. She notes her clavicle is a hollow
cup deep enough to hold a jigger of raspberry liquor.
She imagines her husband sipping from once-kissed
skin before candling burned love to sighs.
In her garden all that grows would be eternally sweet.
Polishing the piano she is reminded of days long passed,
its embroidered bench showing signs of wear; holes eating
through threadbare silk flowers. She decides to take up smoking
but only if she learns the art of applying lipstick; the filter
wearing one smudge of stain and regret, the way a kiss
lingers when lips have parted.
Her body yearns to flee its covering of skin
called wifely- lace.
She assigns herself several demerits for a freezer
full of old food; then removes packages dated years earlier,
remembering dinners never cooked, evenings not had
and how her sister’s face looked like the Virgin Mary
the day she died.
Monet Mourning
She could agonize over periwinkle hours,
life reduced to a frantic state of mind.
Her constant stutter through each moment’s
subject of concern, presented daily
like chronic disease. Unremitting,
save the slight portion of timed beauty
waning short interims when treatment
is prescribed. Her suitable dose of worry
linking one minute to the next, affording
slim reprieve for a slight gasp without
fear. The carpetbagger of dread looms
near, seeking opportunistic disaster.
She doesn’t recall an earthly peace,
when water-lilies floated, pinkly free;
soft petal nymphets on delicate ponds
basking in sunlight’s window-gift.
Her view never spared ultraviolet
radiation. An electromagnetic force
once pierced her fragile lens. She gazes
through the sunlamp’s haze, staring
knowingly into the burn of everyday
blueness; the determinable
color of everything.
Carol Lynn Grellas is a four-time Pushcart nominee and the author of four chapbooks: A Thousand Tiny Sorrows (March Street Press 2010), Breakfast in Winter (Flutter Press 2010), Litany of Finger Prayers (Pudding House Press 2009), Object of Desire (Finishing Line Press 2008) and two electronic e-chaps: To the Children (Victorian Violet Press 2010) and Desired Things (Gold Wake Press 2009). She is widely published in magazines and online journals with work upcoming in Able Muse and Saw Palm Florida Literature and Art. She lives with her husband, five children and a little blind dog named Ginger.
