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The Kitchen In 1950
by Paula Camacho
The kitchen is a large boxcar of a room at
one end of a railroad flat, a wooden table
the center of the universe where food and family gather.
The refrigerator stands away from the wall between table
and front door like a sentinel. In summer, a window fan
moves warm air around like weak moth wings
and the freezer bulges with ice cream.
Back there my brother and I make quickie pies of
bread and jelly, place them in a round metal vise
with handle long enough to hold over the campfire
of a gas range. We eat them before we squeeze
plaster of Paris into rubber molds of Donald Duck
careful to work out bubbles that could bust
the small statue from the inside out like a broken heart,
like the one Uncle Sonny brought home from the war.
In one corner stands a washtub with automatic wringer
and on wash days my mother’s growls could be heard
over the back and forth swish of clothes.
I watch to make sure the window holds her against
the tug of the pulley line that spreads our clothes
across a back yard full of old gossip.
I watch to make sure she does not fly out like I do
in my dreams where a window cannot hold me back
in the kitchen that once was the world of my life.
From Hidden Between Branches.