Go-go boots.                                                                                                                After Dorianne Laux

Satin blouse.

Dining hall porcelain cradling oolong.

 

Garbage liner. Woven handles on a handbag.

Zigzags on an auntie’s knitted blanket.

Secret deodorant in a push-up tube.

 

Paper page, this one lined.

Eggshells in a Rorschach pile. Postal stamp edges scalloped.

Cape Cod curtains on a rod, closed.

 

Tatted lace.  Antibacterial lotion pump in slow motion.

Pillowcase, Downy-fresh scented. Clean hand wipe.

 

Paycheck envelope.  Ten-pound tome. Pearl drop earrings.

Boldface on the roll: the T the U the M the S.

 

A headstone, 1899, name smudged smooth.

 

Tourist scarf from Roma suspended on two white-headed pins.

Computer keys.  Under glass: parents with garden flowers, 1968.

 

Page-a-day calendar.  Snoopy’s smiley snout.

Clipboard, lever loaded with sheaf after sheaf.

 

The face of a bedside alarm. The face of time on my face.

LED flashlight beam.  Panels of a faux Frank Lloyd Wright lamp.

 

Blazer buttons.

 

Niece’s soft cheek.

 

 

Melanie Faith holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, NC. Her writing has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. She is a writing tutor at a college preparatory high school in rural Pennsylvania and an online creative writing instructor. Her WWII-themed poetry chapbook, Catching the Send-off Train, was published by Wordrunner eChapbooks as their summer 2013 selection. Her poems, essays, and fiction have been published in the past year at Vermillion Literary Project, Linden Avenue, Aldrich Press, The New Writer, Foliate Oak, Origami Poems Project, Star 82 Review, and Words Dance. She’s written two children’s picture books in 2013.