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 to music 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 Madame Bovary who lingers when she cuts the onions

and permeates her kitchen with the cloying odour –

the inevitability of domesticity

the stinging tears that longs for escape

from provincial life,

the ever encroaching bourgeois-dom.

there is 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 just desert,

not the spirit to macerate the forbidden fruit.

there is Sylvia Plath who stirs the creative juices

and stews the existentialist doubts

the restless search –

her genius for self annihilation

a feast yet to be served in her kitchen.