Three Poems by Janet Trenchard

Self Reflection in a Wine Cooler

Think of your life.
I begin, sipping a wine cooler,
as a herd of wildebeest, and your husband
as the weakest link in the herd,
and Jodi, the lioness, that must by nature's law,
bring down that weakest link . . . No.
Think of your husband
as something thick and sticky like rubber cement
and Jodi is pulling him off you, freeing you
. . . No.  He's something dry and rigid,
brittle and ossified and she's
a jackhammer, breaking it up,
and you just want to float away
on a piece of broken patio . . .
I pour myself another wine cooler.
Think of Jodi as a fly, I begin again,
you live for years with your husband drinking
wine coolers that you don't even like
when all along she's in the house,
checking out wallpaper,
measuring windows
and just circling.



Prickly Pear

She knew now that what she needed was all this pale sand,
so cleansing and elemental, gently abrasive.
She set down the small paper bag
containing the prickly pear, wondering how
anyone ever got at the sweet fruit.
Wondering that anyone tried.
The old man next door had handed her the brown bag, saying
"So delicious.  You just have to be careful.
Use a pliers."
Maybe she should just dig a deep hole
and drop it in.  Then no one would get hurt.
But infinite as the sand appears
the tides have the power to sweep back
vast curtains of it, and there it would be;
A dangerous fruit bleeding into the sand,
thorns threatening furiously.
No.  She'd keep it.
She  had a pliers.
And she had to taste it.



Cracked Patio

There's always a bottle of wine
on the table
and a glass in my hand,
I open the book,
there's always a book,
there's always a whale poster,
over a clawfoot tub,
there's always Nina Simone on the stereo,
and a floor heater to dance around,
there's always bamboo by the shed
for the kids to jump into from the roof,
there's always a wedgewood stove,
a pile of laundry, a pot of beans,
and dishes to do,
there's always a cracked patio out the kitchen door,
and when you stood there looking up,
a cigarette in your hand,
there was always a hole in the sky
with light raining down.



Janet Trenchard paints and writes poetry.  Often as not she is channeling the Pink Curler Headed Ones.  She has tried to stop but she keeps catching them passing through the doors of her mind.