Afternoon Tea
Inside every cup of tea,
the memory of my English mother
seated at the kitchen nook—
the sweet, tinny scent of beverage
not quite masking the mustiness
of the booth seats, where
spiders wove webs around
the edges, and neglected newspapers,
filled with old news of royal ceremonies,
crumbled in the dark hollow spaces.
Her tea, the only vestige of a London life
long abandoned, must have gone down
both bitter and soothing.
When leaves are delicately shredded,
the tannins are locked in,
but when they are ripped from
the mother plant, the way they were
for the cheap tea my mother had
to drink, they are freely released—
astringents that dry up what was once
organic. She drank her cup alone,
and stirred visions of the Lyons
Corner Houses, where once, she had danced
on every floor—the waltz, the rumba,
the foxtrot. As her tea grew cold,
she stared out the window
at the clothesline and the rotting tool shed,
a landscape neither pastoral
nor carefree, but steeped
in drudgery and regret—
a still life with fragile, empty cup.
Frida and Josephine
I imagine them on sky blue
satin sheets swirling
into the jade of absinthe
in amber lamplight.
Gershwin-inspired saxophone
moans in the background,
as the singer's hands
trace the jagged route
of Frida's unfolded map of pain.
Sheltered from the disdain
of misogynists and Surrealists,
did they talk about art or Paris
or the men who loved them?
I think they talked about their monkeys,
who danced with abandon
to their own music, and brushed
their paint-dipped paws over
canvases of still-life sorrow.
Inside every cup of tea,
the memory of my English mother
seated at the kitchen nook—
the sweet, tinny scent of beverage
not quite masking the mustiness
of the booth seats, where
spiders wove webs around
the edges, and neglected newspapers,
filled with old news of royal ceremonies,
crumbled in the dark hollow spaces.
Her tea, the only vestige of a London life
long abandoned, must have gone down
both bitter and soothing.
When leaves are delicately shredded,
the tannins are locked in,
but when they are ripped from
the mother plant, the way they were
for the cheap tea my mother had
to drink, they are freely released—
astringents that dry up what was once
organic. She drank her cup alone,
and stirred visions of the Lyons
Corner Houses, where once, she had danced
on every floor—the waltz, the rumba,
the foxtrot. As her tea grew cold,
she stared out the window
at the clothesline and the rotting tool shed,
a landscape neither pastoral
nor carefree, but steeped
in drudgery and regret—
a still life with fragile, empty cup.
Frida and Josephine
I imagine them on sky blue
satin sheets swirling
into the jade of absinthe
in amber lamplight.
Gershwin-inspired saxophone
moans in the background,
as the singer's hands
trace the jagged route
of Frida's unfolded map of pain.
Sheltered from the disdain
of misogynists and Surrealists,
did they talk about art or Paris
or the men who loved them?
I think they talked about their monkeys,
who danced with abandon
to their own music, and brushed
their paint-dipped paws over
canvases of still-life sorrow.
Diane Elayne Dees
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Diane Elayne Dees is a writer and
psychotherapist in Covington,
Louisiana. Diane's poems, short
stories, essays, and creative
nonfiction have been published in a
variety of journals and other
venues. She is the winner of the
2008 Editor's Prize for Poetry in
"The Binnacle", and the second prize
winner of the 2008 Janice Farrell
Poetry Prize. Diane publishes Women
Who Serve, a blog about women's
professional tennis.
www.womenwhoserve.blogspot.com
psychotherapist in Covington,
Louisiana. Diane's poems, short
stories, essays, and creative
nonfiction have been published in a
variety of journals and other
venues. She is the winner of the
2008 Editor's Prize for Poetry in
"The Binnacle", and the second prize
winner of the 2008 Janice Farrell
Poetry Prize. Diane publishes Women
Who Serve, a blog about women's
professional tennis.
www.womenwhoserve.blogspot.com
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