Three Poems

Mother: "Behind every successful woman there's a sink full of dirty dishes."
                                                                              
 — the journals of Lydia Davis, December 2003

Commerce

I don't believe in love. I believe
in commerce. I have a man

who, in exchange for my labor over
the mandoline slivering shallots

until I cry, has agreed to scour
every dish. I mix paprika,

black salt and duck fat into a gritty
paste; potato tissue

slips from the blades he sharpens
weekly on our whetstone; I spawn

stains, spread seeds, dismantle heads
of vegetable matter, scatter shreds. We feed.

We feed. From the detritus of wrappers
and leaves, bowls come out steaming—

I ladle compulsively; chunks fleck the table;
beet dye pools, indelible; wine

soils the glasses with sediment
and ink. But under his hand it all

comes clean: every morning, stemware winks
from the dish rack over serene leagues

of Formica, bleached pristine. I believe
in the sink. I believe in the knives' reliable gleam.

In the Kitchen

in the kitchen it smells like old pears
as if a thumb pressed gently on the surface of the air
would poke a fissure through to warm rot

it seems the year is all sockets of rot
the kitchen smells like tinny pots
and time is an old fork and an old knife

the empty fridge is full of vacant stares
the kitchen piled high with old pots
and rusted pans         with circles stacked on squares

and time is falling down the stairs
the kitchen clock is mounted on the air
as if the kitchen walls are barely there

and time is a pear full of soft spots
the knives and forks are scattered there
as if awaiting routine repairs

and time is not          and time is not
the kitchen smells as if it wasn't theirs
the rot smells like kitchen pears

and time is sitting quietly in chairs
the kitchen isn't there           or isn't theirs
or if the kitchen is        then they are not

Chemical

            It turns out that happiness

is a chemical

             in the brain. You might wake up

to it already

             there. Like a husband. You might

try to call it up,

             like an old lover, and fail

to remember what

             it smells like in real life. But

it can be swallowed.

             I've watched my husband do it,

poised beside the sink,

             snapping open the right box

of a plastic pack,

             one for each day of the week.

I keep attempting

             to make myself produce it —

this is better than

             before, I inform the brain,

when all I wanted

             was clear skin. I have clear skin.

Can you not rejoice?

             But the problem's chemical,

like the problem of

             running out of coffee beans,

like the problem of

             scouring the tub with bleach

and ammonia. Passed

             out on the bathmat, being

assiduously

             licked by the cat. What is joy?

She is running her

             tender abrasion over

the unblemished plane

             of my cheek. Purring like her

life depends on it.

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Hannah Louise Poston is a poet, essayist, and online content creator whose writing has
appeared in several places, including Ploughshares, The Yale Review, The New York
Times, Poetry Daily, and Longreads. She has an MFA in poetry from the University of
Michigan Helen Zell Writers' Program and she lives in Maryland.

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