2008 - Glendale Community College

The Housewife B LUES
T
by Rachel Ricker
he medication my husband takes
is always colored blue,
almost darker than the huckleberries in the bush outside
our white washed screen door.
Most the branches and tendrils have hardened
into quick set cement versions of themselves, and his arthritic hands
cannot
get out all those little pricklies.
Though I have tried telling him that my nimble hands,
quick as snappers,
will do the job, he says to mind my business.
He will fix the door when not drowsing from his pills.
The chemicals in them make him sleep, and dream
in colors washed out from blue sea bleach.
Blue sea bleach is what I call the seawater about five miles down
from our house at Ganger Lick beach.
The water is so rough on your eyes
it feels like caustic bleach has washed all the color away.
When he wakes, my husband spends four hours at the screen door,
cursing those damn huckleberries for breaking
his back. For lunch, he gets up, stained blue on his cheeks and under
his fish scale thin nails.
The stains give him the reverse of the French manicure
I get every Friday at the Queen ’63 beauty parlor.
The long strips of juice on his clothes remind me
of the small fish I catch in the winter,
but I cannot remember their name.
Most of the time, I let them go,
since their translucent skin does not show
much meat on the needle bones inside.
Sometimes when he eats his lunch, I will
take those too sharp pliers to rip
out that crumbling screen out in oyster ruffle shapes.
And each time he takes
them from me.
But tomorrow is the time I let it go.
Ginger Housewife
by Laurie Publow
Inkjet Print
2nd Place
Glendale Community College
27