Rex Muston of Iowa is our host today for the 4th day of the March Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. He inspires us to use our kitchen junk drawer to inspire poetry. You can read his full prompt here.
A kitchen junk drawer is second only as frightening to me as forgetting a piece of clothing and showing up at work for everyone to see all truth. It’s downright scary except for the drawer I did clean out last weekend. I still have one to go, and it’s the worst one. An invitation to explore those quirky drawer corners is fantastic! I love that even in the oddities, the junk, there are revelations of life and memories.
Unbanded
One junk drawer
is empty
~the middle one~
but the one
on the edge
is chock-full
of random bits
and pieces
a years’ supply
of 9V batteries
for the
smoke alarms
we change
often
because
Boo Radley shivers
at the smell of
toaster heat and
smoke alarm chirps
plus the goat ball
banding tool
and bright orange
bands
as if the
whole horrid
thing
needed a
screaming
fluorescent
proclamation
across the farm
and a vintage
unfiltered
cigarette-
sized box of
Happy Family
ceramic pigs
from England
a mama
and twin
piglets
but no daddy
there was never
even a space
for his
unbanded
self
now
from the
Funny Farm
kitchen
windowsill
Mama smiles
with a sparkle-eye
bats her eyelashes
and thinks….
freedom!
Common Threads 
Too many terrific lines in this, Kim, and I’ve got to say. This one: “…because/ Boo Radley shivers/at the smell of/toaster heat.” That’s one flirtatious pig family…sort of creepy, though I’m sure benign is what was intended. Now that the family is unboxed, there’s room for a dad to appear. If that happened, you’d have a Gaiman-esque fantasy. Love this!
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Trish, thanks for reading! Yes, those pigs indeed are creepy. Kind of a sinister smile.
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Kim,
I love how your junk drawer contents privilege Boo Radley. Life is about the fur babies. I also love your mama making an appearance in your poem. Yes, the junk drawer sparks memories. And for me the junk drawer is a metaphor for all those places we stash stuff and the way those places evoke memories when we finally sort through them.
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Thank you, Glenda! Boo is everywhere in this house!
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Again I say – how I love this tour of your drawer, excepting, out of respect to the goats, the banding tool. “As if the whole horrid thing needed a screaming fluorescent proclamation across the farm” – this kills me! Hilarious. That Happy Mama pig…I still gotta wonder whatever became of the Daddy. This poem is a delightful peek nto your daily life…including poor ol’ nervous Boo!
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So many chuckles – how I love “for his/unbanded/self” and imagining this array of ceramic pigs. Oh, junk drawers can be pure heaven, when they lead to poetry like this!
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Kim, I do love your poem! You’ve captured such a whimsical tone with the imagery! Thanks for your comment on Ethical ELA today. You really captured what I was hoping to achieve in my poem today!
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I recently cleaned a junk drawer and found: $$$ for a large coffee, pens for the year, batteries for my remote, hope for the future!
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Kim, what a sweet collection of pigs in that happy family. So funny what ends up in our junk drawers, isn’t it?
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