spinsters in kitchens by Claire Xu (Maryland, 17)

After Mary Karr, with lines borrowed from “métaphysique du mal”

In the pantry, the lychee nuts eyeball you,
and here is what you think they see:

a menstruating nun sneaking peach jam at dusk, unaware that
she is the very confession spurned by the gloved tips of the
apse-waltzers, the ones absolved of affairs with belladonnas,
shriveled there, legs widespread.

an odalisque of the Rococo, confidante of the cupids drowned
in fountains and their insatiable, cat-eyed mothers who
fled into the folds of flamenco skirts as their espresso cooled,
furred with frost, everything glazed in place.

a meteorologist who prostrates herself before a gas leak, until
shazam! go the hash browns of her son who, at 19 past 9,
still sees T-rexes fleeing the crater the bathroom mirror left behind,
the freezerspill of smoky Arctic twilight.

a lounge singer, no more intoxicated than a cardboard golfer,
yearning for the pseudo-sous chef to spread Chantilly lace on
her wasted gums and kiss the kitsch out of her body, so finally
Bach’s shut off.

though really i am
a mere pushpin with face embossed on top.




Claire Xu is a teen writer from Maryland. Her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and she is an alumnus of the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference and the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, and the Iowa Young Writers Studio. When not writing, she enjoys visiting art installations and completing crossword puzzles.