Louisiana Anthology
Kevin Cutrer.
“Ceramics.”
© Kevin Cutrer.
Used by permission.
All rights reserved.
Ceramic Piggy Bank
Public domain image from Wikipedia
My mother’s pearls are swine, a menagerie
of cartoon pigs she bought from catalogs.
They pose on nightstands as she wipes away
the family’s careless dust with Pledge and song.
She sings to two embracing by the window
that looks out from the kitchen sink to daylight,
or gives her face back on the face of night.
These lovers are, of course, her love and her.
That laughing one with fishing pole, straw hat,
and denim overalls is him made over.
That one’s her, with a gingham apron on.
The faucet whispers over dishes. TV
talks to her from the living room, the usual:
more floods in distant lands, the Wheel of Fortune.
I don’t know when she started buying pigs.
Only lately have I come to learn
the need to keep some trifles for their charm,
how the TV’s loudest when it’s off.
Text prepared by:
- Bruce R. Magee
Source
Cutrer, Kevin. Lord’s Own Anointed. Loveland, Ohio: Dos Madres, 2015. Print. © Kevin Cutrer. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
L’Anthologie Louisianaise