The Muse of Work

If I could choose my Muse,

she’d have red hair, short, spiky,

and green cat-eye glasses with rhinestones at the tips.

She’d wear a sleeveless dress, ruffled

over shallow scallop-shell breasts.

Can you see how young she is?

I think she’s the girl Sappho loved,

the one with violets in her lap.

When she opens the door,

the white flurry of spring sweeps in.

But I’ve been assigned the Muse of work.

She’s a dead ringer for my mother,

sipping black coffee, scrambling eggs,

a cigarette burning in a cut-glass ashtray.

Then she opens the store. Amber whiskeys

and clear vodkas shine on wooden shelves,

bruise-dark wine rising in the slender necks.

She fills in gaps where she’s made a sale,

each pint and half-pint in its slot.

The phone’s ringing, she’s repeating,

Good morning, Hy-Grade Liquors,

jotting down the order on a carboned pad.

What makes a thing beautiful?

She wears a dark jumper and a fresh blouse each day,

pats her armpits with talcum,

sweeps her lips with Cherries in the Snow.

She knows the pale sherry you crave,

sliding it into a brown bag, sized precisely.

There’s the smell of newsprint and stale beer.

The cash register rings its tinny cymbal.

She steps out of the walk-in icebox

with a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon,

bumping the door closed with her hip.

There was something I needed, something

I wanted to ask her. But I had to wait.

Fifty years later, my mother dead,

when I search for the words to describe

a thing exactly—the smell of rain

or the sound a glass makes

when you set it down—I’m back there

standing in the corner of the store, watching her

as she takes the worn bills,

smooths them in her palm.