Portrait of a Woman in Kitchen
before morning unties its birds, before heat
pings its way from room to room, her breakfast music
shakes me. half-dreaming the sigh
of pork in the pan, biscuits scratched, black grain
gurgling over flame, eggs foamed and setting.
mother sits, back to stove, winter hair
pulling against the comb. she watches
the unwashed curtains, smells the rising
of a sea she can’t stand to see. tired of fighting
the tangled covers, I tip-toe over cold floor,
stand goose-bumped at the window, hungry
for a clean plate of sky.
Danielle Jones-Pruett
Copyright © 2012
Danielle Jones-Pruett holds an MFA degree from University of
Massachusetts Boston. She has been published in Cider Press Review,
First Inkling, Southern Women's Review, and others. She is the winner of the
2011 Vella Poetry Prize.
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