Aubade with Winter Vegetables
I wake to the whisper of your morning Heineken
hissing open. In the glow of the fridge-light, your bottom
is like two suns cresting a horizon, or the shiny copper pot
in that still-life with radishes by Francois Bonvin. When your body
lingers in the door, letting all the cold air out while you eye up my
horde of rutabagas, I count every notch in your
crooked spine. Once, in the Museum of Medical Mysteries,
we witnessed a breakup by the enlarged hearts display,
and you wanted to know why I couldn’t be romantic
like that. I could have argued that the artichoke
is a heart I prepare for you from a cookbook
for picky eaters. Can I help it if a butternut nestles
in the crook of my arm with the heft of a newborn baby?
I could have told you that Bonvin, too, was a Realist,
and grew up underfed, and painted a dozen arrangements
of winter vegetables, by which I would mean,
Forgive me. I just wanted you to live forever.
Rosemary Kitchen has a PhD in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, and an MFA from Warren Wilson College. She has recently served as an instructor of composition at the University of Tennessee. Her collection of poems, Field Notes for the Magician, was a finalist for the Larry Levis Prize. Her poems have been published in Gulf Coast, Cimmaron Review, and Tinderbox.
