Day 45

100 Words for 100 Days June 13 - Sept 20

Progress Bar from Writertopia

I'm finally right on target! Nothing like a deadline to get things caught up.

Title: Mustard

My sister calls him
“vampire kitty.”
You can’t even see the scar
on her face now.
And he twined around her legs
while she sat on the couch
with a dishrag on her face.
She didn’t tell us she was bringing her dog.
And he knows dogs aren’t guests.

He patrols the yard with a passion.
The neighbor’s dogs
--Labador mutts triple his size--
who dig into our garbage
have learned to run in fear.
And tails really do tuck between their legs!
while his orange-stripped
waves proudly in the air
stalking around the boundaries of the yard.

He knows my car
though I confused him
after I wrecked my white car.
I know because he hadn’t left
the kitchen window watching for me
until I walked in the door.
Now I see him as I pull in the driveway
and wave at him before he jumps down
to meet me at the door.

I didn’t raise no lap cat.
But he’s not vicious,
no matter what my sister says,
just standoffish.
Pet me on my terms
is his attitude.
He sists in front of the monitor
and headbutts my chin
and I know I’m loved.

People scratch their heads
when I say his name.
“He’s orange not yellow.”
Why Mustard?
That’s the name he had bestowed
by the drunk in Jan’s after Mustard the kitten
jumped in my truck.
The drunk gave him to me and
I took him to a better life.

Reading Diary 11

Spoon and Tree


What gladdens her is the spoon,
with its tiny saucer of remnants,
its slender shaft, scrubbed last—
and now the kitchen's clean.
Clean are the knives and forks
all akimbo in their drying cage
at the window. The spoon
leans alone toward light,
a backyard limb reflected
in its sunken belly, so a
liquid darkness tongues
its curves and bends
along its slender neck,
making the one tidying up blush
at this bed she's come upon—
refractive, gleaming, the old
dream of coupling
here portioned out
in such a strange
supper.
When the light is gone,
the immaculate house hushed,
she puts down her book
and returns, barefooted,
waking the wood planks
to the kitchen. The cupboard,
too, sighs, its ascending note
sliding wind-clean. And even
before shaking whole grains
into her midnight bowl,
she has reached out,
across the ticking, low-watt
world, her warm mouth
clamping itself wetly
around the cooled,
hard truth
of the spoon.

Sara London
http://www.poetrydaily.org/poem.php?date=13684

I don’t know why “Tree” is put in the title, since it doesn’t appear to have any bearing on the poem. I feel sympathy for the woman character in it. I live alone, hate doing the dishes, and know the satisfaction that the kitchen is finally clean.

Okay, I think I found the tree in the spoon’s reflection. I like those lines suggesting both the amorous and the functional meanings of “spoon.” The second half of the poem confuses me. It’s still about the spoon, but not about the tree. Just about the relationship of the woman and the spoon, and not much of one either. No issues with the imagery; I can see all the actions.