Still Life
Sunday stinks of chicken fat and the
sour stench of vegetable peelings.
The radio whines flat tunes in the steaming kitchen.
Windows flung wide invite flies to gorge
and feed upon the components of the Sunday sacrifice.
Soul soured, she sweats at the cooker,
skin seeped in the rancid smells of the Sabbath feast,
her face flushed with thread veins
like scourge marks on a prophet’s back.
In the yard a girl plays, skin washed in sepia sunlight
as she lives the dreams in her head.
At the table set altar like, the family waits.
In the kitchen the sated bluebottle drones
an incantation, beating desperately against greasy glass.
Mountains of bones, ritual debris, wait to be cleared.
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