Cleaning Out

Monday, July 15, 2013
And in the kitchen your whatnot drawer,
graveyard for clever contraptions
that never changed your life
quite the way you’d hoped—the potato
crinkle-cutter, the suction-cupped
knife-sharpener that wouldn’t stick
and didn’t sharpen, hard-boiled egg
slicer, unused reusable metal skewers,
corn holders mimicking shrunken-down
ears, a retired oven thermometer too
glazed over to read, the grapefruit
knife, the pickle fork, and always this love
of the gewgaw gadget, the whizbang
invention, the showbiz sales spiel, why,
anything was possible, you wanted to believe,
anything but this final emptying out.
Monday, July 1, 2013