Trace Estes

SHELL-SHOCKED

Dorthea states the kitchen suits
her better It's a Mom's only sanctuary
but I know the room caters
to her increasing appetites:
a table large enough for a wall

she's built with hundreds of sleazy romance titles,
the proximity to a freezer overflowing
with vodka, cabinets full of L'il Debbie
Oatmeal Cookies, and enough cross-ventilation
to keep the room filling with smoke

from one cigarette after another.

Despite the fact she intones each word
she reads-the cigarette's ember
metronoming, smoke spilling from the corners

of her mouth, goaded by sotto voce purple prose-
I stay in the room full of light,
stench and squalor, proclaiming
the straight-back chair helps me concentrate
on my writing.

Every morning, as Dorthea
lights up a smoke and cracks open
a new bodice ripper, I zone out
on the other side of the spine-filled wall
and conduct an orchestra of white noise

with a fountain pen - uncapped for two years.

The blank pages, Dorthea's intonations,
a TV's murmur, even the thwap, thwap, thwap
of the off-balance ceiling fan-all

meld into the only music I want
to hear. The only break in the rhythm
occurs when she encounters a word
she doesn't know and wants the meaning.

Looking at her around the piles of books

always brings my eyes level
with the two shrines constructed
in the living room-a big screen,
broadcasting twenty-four hours a day
to matching recliners that remain empty
for completely different reasons;

and an étagère shelf that holds a picture,
framed in silver, bordered by shells
Abel found one spring.

The black ribbon over the frame's left

strikes a discordant note in my symphony
and I question what language
a conch would use to whisper
secrets in my ear if I stood
on the shores of a foreign ocean.

Trace Estes, the newly named Managing Editor of The Alsop Review, is forced to write daily by a pissed-off demon with a trident. The prodding has been effective, as he has poems scattered across the Internet and published in a few anthologies.