Poetry

Motherhood ~ obsessions


Listen to Lesley Pasquin read her poem at This Really Happened on December 6th, 2011, at Café Sarajevo.

If you don’t write this,
you might go mad,
or take to cleaning out the pantry;
difficult to say which is worse.
Fill the sink with cleaning products.
Wring out the cloth:

bits of rice,
broken pasta,
stale crackers,
grilling salt,
herbs bought in the throes of
gourmet dinner clubs now shriveled in their
glass bottles, a litmus for the total
disinterest in anything to do with food.

Start your day with a
kettle of boiling water,
mind the baby and those
tiny, fragile, reaching hands.

Lesley Pasquin is a Montreal poet and educator. She currently teaches in the Faculty of Education at McGill University. Her poems have been published in Arc, Room, Montreal Serai and carte blanche.