Arsenic Lobster poetry journal
Issue Twenty-one
Winter 2009
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Periwinkle
Sara Tracey

Your mother is a very old woman
by the time you come to paint the kitchen.

You wonder if you should tell her:
You look tired, Mama.

Why don’t you sit down?

She has stopped plucking her eyebrows.

Everywhere, paper towels and tinfoil
are rinsed and ready to be reused.

She has taped the edges for you, laid out
trays, rollers, screwdriver.  You pop the lid

and find a blue like your father’s eyes.
Did she know when she chose it?

*

Your father called you the day he left.
His words were sticky, like wet grass.

There were already too many voices,
a basket you carried at your hip.

*

For lunch, she serves wedding soup,
salami, olives, lady fingers.

Alabaster saints guard the windowsills.
You pick paint chips from your nails

while she asks if you’ve been to mass.
If you could tell her one thing,

you would say, Prayer won’t bring him back.

About Sara Tracey

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