Playing at House

-milk
-bread
-cereal
-bananas
-greens
-chicken

This makes me feel Worthwhile. and Valuable.
Especially when I make a menu that goes along with the ingredients�
What a Time Saver!

Mr. Marks used to say the six P�s: �Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance:
Useful.

(but writing a poem)
writing a poem:
is like a dirty little secret...
Sneaking behind some tree in the rain to light up and inhale my own self

my daughter peers in at me sharing the closet with a desk, and wears her disapproval with the same precocious ease with which she wears her grandmother�s high heels:
That is not a grocery list.

I wrote a cookbook once when I was sick.
I didn�t know what to do away from my mamma
but he told me:
Not to leave the house.
��and to: Make soup.

languidunreliablechopping
-carrots
-turnips
-tomatoes
-parm. cheese
-parsley
-rosemary
-garlic

unsteadychopping
��faltering, precarious, and unstable chopping,
But. �if I could do that One thing.
he said.
I would most likely, �get better.
he said,
with words like the precise clip of the amputated fingernail.

-twice baked potatoes (Very Good)
it says next to them
-toast w/jam
-tuna noodle casserole

it�s less likely that I would forget how to make these things,
than I would forget that they existed.
That I would forget that I am an animal who eats.

-Indian chai tea (Boil Twice)

I wonder what my mother would have done, seeing me struggle over one pot of soup, cooking the way she does for 300 without sitting down.
�or feeling as useless as a used up grocery list in an empty cart.

(I never choose the carts with Things in them)
poems?

the old lists, like the clinging, discarded skins of cicadas
the butts of the goody,
Dirtier than a person�s hands:
a person�s refuse�

And,
Cleaning Things: