2004 Cave Canem Poetry Prize
Winner: Amber Flora Thomas for Eye of Water
Judge: Harryette Mullen
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

Chore
By Amber Flora Thomas

        “The serpent beguiled me
                                                                and I did eat”
                                -Genesis 3:13

Blue jays balance on the chicken wire fence
while she falls from sleep into the substantial landscape.
The compost heap’s reliquary of household

meats ferments under lawn clippings.
The dog chained to a redwood in the yard
learns all morning to untangle itself.

Beauty comes by accident over each scene
and ends: unbroken silver as ice poses release
on the clothesline, the subtle disappearance

of black beetles into heads of lettuce, the radish
whose bright surface breaks a pale interior.
Like cold water hitting her wrist, suddenly every pore

knows itself and flinches. Life that makes restless
even the rug she shakes, tail whipping
dust and animal hair like clover into the day.

She expects the bone vexing want. Its redundancy.
Its tide of touch. A guttural nonsense. When he asks
what she’s thinking: an arrow, a lip, the low brow

where porch eaves hang loose, the irises
blooming despite her. Say work. Say danger.
Dare she open her mouth if not to take his tongue,

his breath as he sinks back into sleep. Every morning
she senses the impossible balance: haphazard
in its well-defined plot to leave her numb.

The refrigerator chokes in the shadows
of the kitchen. The ladder rusting on the porch
will one day be left at the dump. So many chores

she didn’t expect. Always, some creature needs
its back stroked. Heads bow to eat as she pours
food into bucket and trough. All those mouths

opening around her. Iridescent bubbles
bursting their sour smell. The bleat of pink
tongues, snapping along the edge of her hand.

From a blessed sleep, those curses crowd
to be named, to drag from her the suspicion
that this was always the plan: wet and muddy work.

An admission that won’t leave her
without waking him & the whole damn world.

She snaps the long neck of the garden hose
and waters her tomatoes.

Chore Copyright ©2001 by Amber Flora Thomas. Originally published in Clackmas Literary Review (Fall 2001); reprinted from Eye of Water by Amber Flora Thomas, with permission of the author.

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