photoart: ralph murre
Domestic
Arts
by
Donna Hilbert
I
am a young mother
so
bored staying home
I
agree to play Bridge
with
my neighbors,
whom
I suspect put up with me
to
find a fourth to fill the table.
They
are goddesses of domestic arts,
and
between games hold forth
on
finer points of decoupage, macramé
and
the transformation of cans
into
casseroles.
Still
I am smug,
for
I have gifts of my own:
precognitive
dreams
and
gift of the phone,
which
I demonstrate by chanting
Mother Mother Mother Dear
call me now while my
friends are here,
and
when the phone rings
they
are believers.
Because
I love an audience,
I
tell them my dreams:
how
I see trash cans burning
the
night before they burst in flame
behind
my house,
how
Papa’s heart attack
awakens
me from sleep.
How
I knew the night before she labored
Jan’s
baby boy would be born dead.
Now
the neighbors play three-handed games—
Pinochle,
Euchre—
keep
their children indoors,
cross
against the light
when
they see me coming.
~
first published in Tears in the Fence
