The Night Kitchen

by Royal Rhodes

The kitchen began talking during the storm
in the corrugated metal roof that tugged
at the anchoring nails in wounds of old wood;
and the double–hung windows shook in their tracks.
The house, hollowed and spoilt by the ancient worm,
dormant in the wild things that understood
a place of eating, being eaten, drugged
with a blood feast, drew these invisible packs.
The tearful faucet yellowed the empty sink;
its throat opened, drowning in wet gasps.
Appliances — appliances — strummed a breath
as loud as fluorescent tubes that glowed and shattered,
telling us in light what to feel and think.
The stove’s porcelain skin, dark where it clasps
the edge of its yawning door, hides where death
crouched, consuming all that really mattered.
And plates, racked to dry, had fingerprints
of countless meals, and scratches from forks and knives,
cutting, over and over, into meat,
while the toaster’s split mouth opened for soft
things to enclose; and inside a hot spring glints
in a final convulsion that expels our spent lives.
In the window the speechless trees gesture aloft,
where clouds mushroom in patterns that never repeat.