Sara Biggs Chaney
My Mother's Hours
I. When I was young, dinner was a one-woman show, the curtain at eight. Through the golden hour and into night fall I heard my mother stepping, rattling, sighing over the chatter of the television and turned up the volume. When we finally sat down we were never without pork chops on porcelain, linen napkins clasped with silver. Mom, a weary hawk, watched dad pour salt on red potatoes, refilled my cup before I saw its bottom, inspected the table cloth for flaws that no one else could see. II. With wet hair and nicked knees I am making meatballs in the kitchen. My hands are dimwitted but persistent students, pushing through the fat, the lean, making it stick. I am untaught in so many ways. I might err on the side of absurdity and throw away the meal before it's served. Or I might let the meat breathe while I burn brillo pads on the back step— wave them in front of my nose in the dark, savor the smell of something never meant to be consumed.
Sara Biggs Chaney's first chapbook, Precipice Fruit, was released in October, 2013. Her second chapbook, Ann Coulter's Letter to the Young Poets, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in 2014. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, Whiskeypaper, Menacing Hedge, Spork Press, The Adroit Journal, and other places. You can catch up with Sara at sarabiggschaney.blogspot.com.
