Poetry / ashes to ashes
Ashes to Ashes
My mother ironed
our underwear.
The cigarette
balanced at the edge
of her tightrope lip
defied gravity.
Burnt orange ashtray
danced atop the ironing board
like an open grave, primed
for another skeleton to fall.
“Welcome to the Chinese Laundry,”
she’d say, laughing
on the outside. Surrounded
on all sides, by hanging garments
which doubled for wallpaper.
In the 70s our clothes matched
our kitchen. We wore avocado
and ate dead animals.
Later, from her living room
deathbed morphine dream
a perpetually lit cigarette
clutched between bony fingers
she flicked ashes
on her grave and scribbled
final arrangements
on a steno pad, in pencil.
I chose French vanilla
lace for the funeral.
Grief has many flavors.
We buried her
in pressed blue jeans
and trademark white Keds.
Simplicity is an acquired taste.
I sort laundry into dark
and light. Steam sharp
creases into my husband’s
shirt sleeves by request.
I don’t mind wrinkles.
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Your poetry is very esoteric. I have to say I am a fan. You paint such a vivid picture.
I do think that I would rephrase “defied gravity”. I’ve read it a few times and it doesn’t seem to fit.
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defied gravity. – very vague and possibly incorrect, if it were defying gravity if would float, and I can’t quite picture that. I would try to rephrase it, maybe even remove it completely: balancing on the edge of her lip is a precise enough image, so this seems superfluous and confusing.
You need some kind of punctuation behind the board, otherwise it reads like the ashtray dances like a grave and that’s a bit weird, no?
avocado is great, paints nicely the clothes, but dead animals is too vague, and though it has its weigth, it doesn’t add to the image
Grief has many flavors. and Simplicity is an acquired taste. are too vague. This is something that the reader senses through your poem. I would completely take those phrases out. You don’t need to accentuate that to your readers. They will feel it through the atmosphere.
By your title I would like if the ending was also somehow connected with the image of cigarette ashes.
Except the first 6 lines the line breaks were nicely executed, though it may be a personal preference – short lines slow down the piece for me.
You have some very very good specific images, like the clothes in which your mother was burried, just stick to those and somehow try to round the piece.
Nice!
I really like most of this poem.
The ashtray dancing doesn’t work I think. It’s too bizarre of an image. Just take out “danced” from the sentence.
eating “dead animals” sounds like propaganda from the animal rights movement and we all know propaganda makes bad poetry. Maybe say “ate red meat” instead?
The rest of the poem is very good. I like the contrast/irony of extreme housekeeping with fatal bad habits.
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