Cleaning the Refrigerator The fettuccine from that night we both were angry, fought, stayed up late. Then, granting clemency, made love, cooked, and ate. I dump an overgrowth of mold – a bowl-shaped pasta filigree. I toss something sour, and pale as a spleen. In the fruit bin, a jungle: a dusky blue plum, dusted with a dry grey soot. A nectarine, bruised and blooming. And greens, a gluey stew. A lone silver pickle swims in a milky film. A party goat cheese I forgot, or didn’t want, now black and rotting. And something totally unknown clots the sink like cottage cheese, redolent and overwhelming. Mouth-breathing, I hold my nose against the stink as slowly I, too, decompose.
M. Brooke Wiese’s work has appeared most recently in Bronze Bird Books journals and anthologies, The Road Not Taken, and Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, and is forthcoming in Spoon River Poetry Review. Her chapbook has been accepted for publication by Finishing Line Press and her sonnets have been taught by poet Billy Collins to his college students. She tries to write poems in a contemporary voice in traditional forms. She lives in New York City and currently teaches English at a special education inclusive school in Manhattan to high school students of all abilities.
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{page:WordSection1;}Out of the rumbling ground and into the bright
August light, into the city scrum,
the gum-covered sidewalks, the human bloom,
the lack of air and elbow room, the blight
in streets where rats and pigeons fight
for crumbs or top-dog status, the scaffolding a boon
only in a storm. Out of the shout and out of the din,
the waiting room is almost too polite.
Heavy curtains drawn against the daylight
mute the voices in the waiting room
to a soft ssh-ssh, like a broom
sweeping. The
carpet’s pattern is infinite;the low pile guaranteed to accommodate
a cane or walker. The
walls are pale as the moon.The unassuming art is laudanum
for the sick, unobjectionable as life.
You might expect a moan from those with no
hope left, or those alone and lonely. Instead
you’ll find a convivial place where people nod
and smile in passing, yet keep contained as though
a broad gesture or loud guffaw might offend;
and all are patient, and no one finds it odd.
There’s coffee too, and tea (for free!) and no
lack of crackers to nibble by patients with hatted heads
for stomachs distressed by the fusillade
of poisons shot into a vein, a salvo
against the spread of errant cells, the Red
Devil entrenched in a battle to the death with God.
Pulsebeat Poetry Journal 