 |
Helen has a photograph of flaming
Troy mounted within a thin maroon frame
on the wall of her apartment. It hangs
above a round table with a wicker
base. Matching chairs roll clumsily on small
brass wheels. She's gracious to the Egyptians,
(after escaping capture as Spartan
house-slave) helping prepare the royal dead
before they're sent to priests, sewing small cloth
bags to hold hearts in their canisters. Plants
are absent from her home. She has no cat
or annoying colored bird, miming noise
like young Cassandra before Troy was sacked.
Helen stacks moldy clay bowls in towers.
Blue mold grows in amber cups, eats remnants
of fruit juice. She loosely shapes paper plates
in slant pyramids; cityscapes composed
of yogurt containers, black apple cores
and medicine vials. Paris's bright shrine
is modeled in soda cans. Her bedroom:
mounds of stratified mail: bank statements, slick
magazines, old wedding invitations.
|
|
|
|
|
|
