Housewife Kate, by Amy Standring

Housewife Kate

Across the kitchen table a
bizarre mouth
opens and closes like an elevator, and her voice drones
as if there is a fly trapped inside.   In a perverse happy tone,
she tells tales about the troubles of friends of a friend,
scuttling out from her tongue like cockroaches
each bug screaming Schadenfreude, Schadenfreude.   It is as if I am reading her face as the Rosetta Stone –
three scripts of the same text
ancient greek, demotic script, hieroglyphics.
Except this face is harder to decipher,
it is all greek to me and reveals
nothing of the blonde Nefertiti in front of me.   I want to ask her if what she really wants is
to peel then crush her shell of a home
like a garlic clove,
grate off her high heels
with a pumice stone
then run flat-footed
like an infant or the wife of an ape?   I picture her after I leave, still sat at the table
like a salt-cellar
exposing a white skull of crystals,
clothing her black torso of peppercorns looking
like millions of small dead hearts
thrown into one body-pot
never ground hard enough to disappear.

poems.one - Amy Standring

Amy Standring