“Desperation” © Thomas Riesner

 

Unmade

Sometimes I like to leave my bed unmade and go to work
As an OCD experiment for someone who could spend hours
Reorganizing a drawer full of eyeshadows and cheek blushes
Lotions and shampoo, conditioner and essential oils
Inhaling the smells of familiarity and femininity — that dirty word!

But the bed, it’s too much now for my brain
The one that can’t fathom the days
When closing the bedroom door was enough – start the car, go to work, teach,
Then go home and make the bed: try not to get into it before 8:00
There are no metaphors here. The bed is a bed, I think.

Or maybe it’s a way to shut off thoughts of a dwindling family
My underwhelming career, and the thing that scurries between the floors
At night. It is not a metaphor, I think. The house is old and full of holes
Big enough for squirrels to run back and forth at 2:00 in the morning
Although the squirrels might be a metaphor.

The house is old enough to scare people who feel a chill at the top of
          the stairs,
A presence that’s clearly more than a draft: one of hairs on the back of
          their necks.
I worry more about the squirrels and the knock on the wall the first night I
          lived there
To me the house is always cold. They only things I feel are drafts from
          the basement
Made of dirt with no winter graves – those made when a body couldn’t
          be buried
During the frozen winters of central New York. Winters are not metaphors
          here

So if the winters are not a metaphor
And if the cold is not a metaphor
And if the squirrels are not a metaphor
And the house is not a metaphor
And the bed is not a metaphor
And the drawer is not a metaphor
Why do I always have to make the bed?

 

Patricia Murphy earned masters and doctoral degrees in English from Idaho State University. Originally from New Jersey, she now lives in Central New York, where she teaches writing, literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies at the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute. CityArt, Arsenic Lobster, Ethos, River Walk Literary Journal, Breadcrumb Scabs, Yes, Poetry and Adagio Verse have published her poetry and fiction. Her book of poetry The Occupant was published by Finishing Line Press.

Thomas Riesner: “I was born in Leipzig,Germany in 1971 and I still live here today. Already in elementary school I often painted “abstract” instead of the given concrete drawing. I later retained this style or changed it to “abstract figuration ” I painted a lot at home, always without professional guidance. I didn’t have any specific role models. When I start a picture, I only have a certain idea, but often something completely different emerges. I would describe myself as an outsiderart artist.”