Five Poems by Julie Cyr
Based on the Theme of “Housekeeping”
Tea & Meditation
Our life was a routine, tea and meditation, drinking from dainty china cups, palms turned upward for inspiration. So when you died unexpectedly, no longer a steeped fruity tisane of oms and Buddha bellies, but afternoons of single parenting— I used to pity those women. I’m learning aloneness, to pray on my zafu, but the gods have left me. This cushion of buckwheat husks collects cat hair and dead lady bugs. Oh, to be carefree with polka dots on my wings, but I have to balance the checkbook, mend a hole in our son’s jeans. Kornfield says, after the ecstasy, the laundry. I don’t think he washes his own clothes. I scrub the pots and look at the shelf to see your Irish Breakfast going stale. I can’t take the caffeine, but I won’t throw the tea away. We were comfortable with everything in twos— children, cars, coupling . . . My rituals are gone. I’m too tired to clean the strainer and heat the kettle.
Ashley Scrubs the Kitchen Floor
I fill the mop bucket with steaming water
and clear away the chairs from the linoleum.
I pour just enough bleach to burn
the inside of my nose
and to make my hands tingle.
I wear an old T-shirt and jeans, the knees whitened
from scouring the kitchen floor.
I start at the door, since it’s the dirtiest place,
where I tread in and out across the threshold.
I work top to bottom, left to right, like reading a book.
It takes at least two hours to do a proper job.
When I’m done, I sit on my knees in the bottom right corner
and wait for the floor to dry.
My cat doesn’t dare to pad across the wet surface,
so we sit and wait until it’s safe.
Next Thursday, after lunch, 1 p.m.,
it will be time to scrub the floor again.
Homecoming
A Welcome Home sign hung on the door drawn in crayon with toddler scribbles and near-circle flowers by my four-year-old son whose hair covered his eyes. I brushed it aside, Mom, we need to see Stan the Man, our barber, who let him turn on the clippers. Dandelions had erupted into puffs on the lawn, the boys blew on them to show me the seeds floating on the wind, a skill Grammy had shown them. I knew about weightlessness and skyward drift. I opened the pantry and found Cheez Whiz and dried beef in a jar, food that had no expiration. I wish I could last forever . . . I had missed cooking for my babies and husband. In my sons’ bedroom, I found the cloth diapers, now rags eaten through by urine, left in the pail for five weeks. Tonight, I’ll put my boys to bed, rock my two-year-old son, nestle him into my chest, inhaling his flyaway hair, and read to my four-year-old, who asks more questions than I can answer.
Folding the Clothes
—after “Taking Out the Trash” by Kamilah Aisha Moon I snap the napkins trying to rid them of wrinkles. If I was my mother, the iron would be found, but it’s somewhere in the back of the closet, and I can’t be bothered, so I meditate over Dave’s boxer briefs, trying to trash the ones with holes, but he thinks I’m overstepping. What do they say about getting into a car accident with skanky undies? Suit yourself, Darling . . . I fold my T-shirts inside out because I’ll go through the extra effort when I put them on. I’m a haphazard housewife. Well, I’m not a housewife, but I like alliteration, so I’ll keep it. I’ll keep folding laundry until I die. I could pay someone else to do it, but I don’t want anyone else touching my thongs unless it’s in a sexy kind of way. How do you fold a thong? I just toss them into the top drawer, a mélange of unmentionables. If I paid someone else to worry over my wash, I’d feel bougie. I’ll keep folding Dave’s socks just so, he’s particular about that as well. It’s an act of love that I keep reaching into the basket.
Doing the Laundry
I walk outside on this last warm autumn day checking to see if the clothes on the line are dry and spy two pasty white rear ends, my sons pissing into the woods. On another day, another moment, or maybe another life, I would have yelled. I don’t disturb their brotherly bonding ritual and feel a twinge of jealousy, never having a sister to pinky swear, braid hair, or bare my secrets. They pull up their pants, run off through the clean laundry, and laugh knowing they’ve been caught. On another day, another moment or maybe another life, I would have yelled, accused them of soiling the clean sheets with their dirty faces and hands. Instead, I unclip the clothes and place them into the basket, another chore of letting go.
I’m currently working on a full length manuscript, as well as a chapbook of ekphrasis. I’m reading The Art of Description: World into Word by Mark Doty and The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo.