After the Suicides

We had to go on without you, rise to work,
open the checkbook and balance the funds,

there was laundry to be bundled to the basement,
shoved in the washer, someone forgetting just how

terribly the spin cycle ends, how it leaves jeans sopping,
though they eventually dried out to be hauled

upstairs, and the living room collected dust
on surfaces, dog hair stuck to the rug, clutter of books,

and the kitchen, hearth of it all, hub of life, there
spinach was old, florets of broccoli gone yellow,

icemaker welded the ice into cubes-in-a-field,
potatoes had eyes, fish past its prime,

and yet out of what was edible, someone wrought
a meal into shape, a simple pasta sauce,

an invented bit with mushrooms, onion, cream
poured over tricolor fettucine or angel hair,

that made us laugh, angels indeed, yes
there was red wine from Tuscany, one of us

set the table, smoothed the cloth, removed
the crumbs and we sat together, a candle’s light

flickering but holding, the draft didn’t wink
it out, around our talk most ordinary, blessed

by a tone of kindness we each adopted
without discussion, lots of please and thanks

as we handed food around, basket of steaming bread
for buttering, and we knocked glasses, looking

each other right in the eye, lovers, opponents, friends
too, agreeing in courage, unvoiced, for another day.

[i.m. A. Bourdain & K. Spade]

PATRICIA CLARK is the author of five volumes of poetry, including most recently The Canopy (2017) and Sunday Rising (2013). She has also published three chapbooks: Wreath for the Red Admiral and Given the Trees; a new one, Deadlifts, is just coming out from New Michigan Press. From 2005-2007 she was honored to serve as the poet laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is Poet-in-Residence and Professor in the Department of Writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.

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