The Idea of Housework, poem by Dorianne Laux

THE IDEA OF HOUSEWORK
By Dorianne Laux

What good does it do anyone
to have a drawer full of clean knives,
the tines of tiny pitchforks
gleaming in plastic bins, your face
reflected eight times over
in the oval bowls of spoons?
What does it matter that the bathmat’s
scrubbed free of mold, the door mat
swept clear of leaves, the screen door
picked clean of bees’ wings, wasps’
dumbstruck bodies, the thoraxes
of flies and moths, high corners
broomed of spider webs, flowered
sheets folded and sealed in drawers,
blankets shaken so sleep’s duff and fuzz,
dead skin flakes, lost strands of hair
flicker down on the cut grass?
Who cares if breadcrumbs collect
on the countertop, if photographs
of the ones you love go gray with dust,
if milk jugs pile up, unreturned,
on the back porch near the old dog’s dish
encrusted with puppy chow?
Oh to rub the windows with vinegar,
the trees behind them revealing
their true colors. Oh the bleachy,
waxy, soapy perfume of spring.
Why should the things of this world
shine so? Tell me if you know.

SOURCE: “The Idea of Housework” by Dorianne Laux appears in Sweeping Beauty: Contemporary Women Poets Do Housework, edited byPamela Gemin (University of Iowa Press, 2005). The 212-page collection, which features work by over 80 poets, is available at Amazon.com.

BOOK DESCRIPTION: Thankless, mundane, and “never done,”  contemporary women poets are still writing the domestic experience — sometimes resenting its futility and lack of social rewards, sometimes celebrating its sensory delights and immediate gratification, sometimes cherishing the undeniable link it provides to their mothers and grandmothers. In Sweeping Beauty, a number of these poets illustrate how housekeeping’s repetitive motions can free the imagination and release the housekeeper’s muse. For many, housekeeping provides the key to a state of mind approaching meditation, a state of mind also conducive to making poems. The more than eighty contributors toSweeping Beauty embrace this state and confirm that women are pioneers and inventors as well as life-givers and nurturers.

The Idea of Housework, poem by Dorianne Laux

THE IDEA OF HOUSEWORK
By Dorianne Laux

What good does it do anyone
to have a drawer full of clean knives,
the tines of tiny pitchforks
gleaming in plastic bins, your face
reflected eight times over
in the oval bowls of spoons?
What does it matter that the bathmat’s
scrubbed free of mold, the door mat
swept clear of leaves, the screen door
picked clean of bees’ wings, wasps’
dumbstruck bodies, the thoraxes
of flies and moths, high corners
broomed of spider webs, flowered
sheets folded and sealed in drawers,
blankets shaken so sleep’s duff and fuzz,
dead skin flakes, lost strands of hair
flicker down on the cut grass?
Who cares if breadcrumbs collect
on the countertop, if photographs
of the ones you love go gray with dust,
if milk jugs pile up, unreturned,
on the back porch near the old dog’s dish
encrusted with puppy chow?
Oh to rub the windows with vinegar,
the trees behind them revealing
their true colors. Oh the bleachy,
waxy, soapy perfume of spring.
Why should the things of this world
shine so? Tell me if you know.

“The Idea of Housework” by Dorianne Laux appears in Sweeping Beauty: Contemporary Women Poets Do Housework, edited by Pamela Gemin (University of Iowa Press, 2005). The 212-page collection, which features work by over 80 poets, is available at Amazon.com.

BOOK DESCRIPTION: Thankless, mundane, and “never done,”  contemporary women poets are still writing the domestic experience — sometimes resenting its futility and lack of social rewards, sometimes celebrating its sensory delights and immediate gratification, sometimes cherishing the undeniable link it provides to their mothers and grandmothers. In Sweeping Beauty, a number of these poets illustrate how housekeeping’s repetitive motions can free the imagination and release the housekeeper’s muse. For many, housekeeping provides the key to a state of mind approaching meditation, a state of mind also conducive to making poems. The more than eighty contributors to Sweeping Beauty embrace this state and confirm that women are pioneers and inventors as well as life-givers and nurturers.

Indian Summer in New Mexico, Poem by Clifton Snider

INDIAN SUMMER IN NEW MEXICO
by Clifton Snider

The high desert sky
nearly cloudless
the day before the clocks fall back,
sun bright as an atomic flash,
cottonwoods, aspens, maple, willows–
leaves falling like they never do
back home in Southern California,
a day to walk on roads
whose dust rises with every pickup
& Prius that passes,
& as you watch a northern flicker
with red mustache
perch on a slender stump
two dogs cross the field
and the creek bed
and join you on the road–
you shoo them off
& happily they scamper away
& you walk down a quiet residential street,
one house a junk yard of old cars & trucks
stuffed with all shapes of rusted metal & tubes,
further up a majestic modern adobe,
unoccupied for the season,
kids jump on a trampoline in another yard
while grandma and grandpa sit in the shade–
then back to your casita & for once
you leave the door open.

–6 November 2010, Taos New Mexico

“Indian Summer in New Mexico” is found in Clifton Snider’s collection Moonman: New and Selected Poems (World Parade Books, 2012), available at Amazon.com. The poem, along with other poetry by Clifton Snider, will appear in the Silver Birch Press SUMMER ANTHOLOGY, a collection of poetry and prose from authors around the world — available June 1, 2013.