This is not about the kitchen table
The kitchen table never touches the floor,
hangs from the wall like a shelf.
The kitchen table where we ate so many dinners,
its three sides and the three of us.
The kitchen table where we read the small script
of our small drama.
The kitchen where my mother cooks and cooks,
and I am nine, standing in the doorway
with my friend Julie,
my cousin, at the table, changed in these two ways:
her handsome nose now bobbed to a nubbin
her delicious rough-bark name sanded to a smooth plank.
I introduce her by the wrong name,
the kitchen table a witness, holds my humiliation like a stain.
Another fine poem, Judy. The anaphora here is striking, and creates a fine tension with the title, as to whether this poem might really be about the kitchen table. And yet, the title leads us inexorably to the speaker’s real concern — the changes in her friend, and the speaker’s own “humiliation like a stain.” Wonderful!
Thanks again, so much, for taking the time to read and comment.