Kitchen table blues

She retires to her kitchen

for the comfort and the warmth

it is her den, her study and her workplace

she reads, she listens and she cooks the family meals

but

there are also ghosts in this kitchen

spirits who visit and sleep between the pages of her books on her desk

there is Emma Bovary who lingers when she cuts the onions

and permeates her space with the cloying odour –

the inevitability of domesticity

the stinging tears that longs from escape

from provincial life,

the ever ever encroaching bourgeois-dom

Also Anna Karenina who infuses the air of romance

and whips up dreams of the realms of passion

as airy as any pavlova

she has no panache for this desert

nor the spirit to macerate the forbidden fruit.

Sylvia Plath stays to stir the creative juices

and stews the existentialist doubts

the restless search –

her genius for self annihilation

a feast yet to be served in this kitchen.