Swizzle Stick

Maid of Honour

April 7 — “Play the opposites” — a theatre term I sometimes don’t like! But here I mean: do something unexpected in your poem, once or more than once. Any time you spot a cliché of feeling or of words, try its opposite, and somehow make it work!

I am your servant, I live in the wing.
A maid of honour, my apron is clean

& through service I fly. Am I free?
I washed the windows to your soul

so now you can see my toil
& travail. Housework is noticed

when it hasn't been done.
A woman's work is never done.

I made a stitch in time
& a year disappeared. I saved nine

dollars from slow death between
cushions. I swept ashes to ashes,

dust to dust, swept it all under the rug.
I hoovered the garden & nature abhorred it.

I thought outside the box & the toys,
while thoughtless, came too.

I reinvented the wheel, now with angles
allowing for pauses, for rest.

I did all the heavy lifting,
taking the elephant in the room

to the next level. Maid, I am,
made to do this, to make

some things dirty making
other things clean.