Cauchemar

I bolt awake rueing the idea

of roasting two racks of ribs

on what? I haven’t the pans

or making macaroni & cheese

what since I first prepared it

from my child’s cookbook

has become mac ‘n cheese

an addiction nationwide, still

I prefer to make it rather than

roast ribs because the smell

of yesterday’s barbecue

beef, chicken, pork, plus sides

still steeps my hair, my hands

the quick of my fingernails

Housekeeping

my mother’s going-to-a-doctor’s-appointment

dress — black wool, empire waist, pearls

above, seamed stockings below — her face

a thunderstorm, she waits on my client’s porch

calls me out, chews me out for lowering

myself, she who’s raised herself from dirt-

poor Catholic to wife of a bigamous drink-

& drug-addled WASP doctor — How dare

you demean everything we stand for?

I don’t engage, stand there on yellowing

lawn surrounded by oak & maple woods

hot with New Jersey summer, how can she

not sweat in that dress? how can I

convince her to leave? I’ve two more bathrooms

to clean, not a single hair, the woman

inspects, I tell her, Go! Leave me alone

I’m not coming back home — what’s home?

she moved to DC, only later noticed

she’d forgotten me, how she traced me

I never thought to ask, I thought her diseased —

lipstick, permed curls — what she stood for

hadn’t a goddamned thing to do with me

Lillian Reardon

small when I first knew her at 75

hands clubbed with arthritis

soon my grandfather dies, soon

she breaks her hip, survives

the rest of her days a prisoner in a chair

is fed, is bathed, is put to bed

I never knew Mr Jones at all, yet

hated him for eating chops for breakfast

while children ate porridge & prunes

Ma, her fourteen children call her

to us they call her Grandma Jones

I imagine her in bed with him

once Lena, or was it Leah? dies

three months old, failure to thrive

in bed with his insistent demand

they’re Catholic, such a poor excuse

she could have stopped him

then Thelma, the seventh, Thelma

who raged most, did anyone raise her?

Ma lives in the house for 65 years

children taking care of her, did anyone

ask her, before Mr Jones, after Lena

Lillian Reardon, Is this what you want?

Hung on the Clothesline at Charles Street

bleached ragged towels, white sheets,

dish towels, cleaning rags, women’s underwear

limp sometimes gray with age, pastel blouses

stiff cotton skirts, Tommy’s briefs & chino pants

flannel shirts, undershirts, handkerchiefs —

the ironing board stands in the kitchen, one aunt

or another looks up & often grumbles before

she moves aside for someone to get from kitchen

to everywhere else — everything just about

needs to be ironed, they iron Grandma’s pale

flower-print shirtwaists — the struggle to work

a dress over Grandma’s head, down her torso

over her hips, lift one hip, then the other to drag

the skirt down & past her knees before the hoist

to the wheelchair for another motionless day

Lily’s friend Miriam irons in the living room

never puts the board away, Miriam a sloven

nothing picked up, dishes not washed from day

to day, Miriam kneads with large knuckled hands

widowed, one child, poor as everyone is poor

she mocks anything & everything, cynical & wise

as if bitter laughter could make life more

Mishap

the cat's face, foot, random patches

blotched with glue-trap glue, the bird —

small, brown — spreadeagled, fatally

I fear, stuck, though I release first wing

then both feet, set it free — frantic

though weak flutter, so many feathers

stay in the trap, Beatrice chases the bird

round & round the patio, I chase both

for nothing — wild bird, programmed cat

the bird finds a safe space, there

I fear, to die, while blackened fur

will grow out, fall out, or I”ll trim it

glue trap set high on a beam for mice

snares a wren instead, beaked face

white lines run along the eyes