A poem about anger and ironing
December 11, 2007 1:31 PM 
Subscribe
Looking for a poem I read about a domestic frustration and a housewife snapping after toiling away in quiet desperation.
It's a relatively modern poem (I think) about an over-worked mother and wife.
In the poem she's doing some ironing and has just folded her husband's freshly washed and ironed dress shirt. The mewling, newborn kitten of one of her children immediately urinates on it.
She grabs the kitten and dashes it against the wall, killing it.
At the end of the poem she's quietly scrubbing away at the spot on the wall where the kitten hit.
It's a short and very powerful poem. I believe it is recent enough that it may not appear free online (I'm happy to be corrected), but if anyone knows the poet's name so that I can get her (I think) collected works.
I originally read the poem in a poetry textbook in a college course.
Crowded around the glowing open mouth
Of the electric oven, the children
Pull on clothes and eat brown-sugared oatmeal.
The broiler strains, buzzing to keep up
500 degrees, and the mother
Is already scrubbing at a dark streak
On the kitchen wall. Last night she'd been
Ironing shirts and trying her best to explain
Something important to the children
When the old mother cat's surviving
Two kittens' insistent squealing and scrambling
Out of their cardboard box began
To get to her. The baby screamed every time
The oldest girl set him on the cold floor
While she carried a kitten back to its place
Near the stove, and the mother cat kept reaching
For the butter dish on the table. Twice, the woman
Stopped talking and set her iron down to swat
A quick kitten away from the dangling cord,
And she saw that one of the boys had begun to feed
Margarine to his favorite by the fingerful.
When it finally jumped from his lap and squatted
To piss on a pale man's shirt dropped below
Her inroning board, the woman calmly stopped, unplugged
Her iron, picked up the gray kitten with one hand
And threw it, as if it were a housefly, hard
And straight at the yellow flowered wall
Across the room. It hit, cracked, and seemed to slide
Into a heap on the floor, leaving an od silence
In the house. They all stood still
Staring at the thing, until one child,
The middle boy, walked slowly out of the room
And down the hall without looking
At his mother or what she'd done. The others followed
And by morning everything was back to normal
Except for the mother standing there scrubbing.
From The Poet's Companion: A Guide To The Pleasures Of Writing Poetry by Kim Addonizio & Dorianne Laux
posted by iconomy at 1:48 PM on December 11, 2007 [6 favorites]