Crane Wife – Vandal Poem of the Day

After my mother tosses a sleeping kitten into the dryer

with a basketful of my father’s laundry,

she bows over the kitchen sink for hours,

her long hair hanging like water frozen from a faucet.

She drowns his shirts, twists the bleached sleeves

between her raw fists, like the myth

of the crane wife curling over a loom, weaving

white bolts for her poor husband to sell.

When he discovered her, plucking her own feathers

to spin into cloth, she flew away—

Always we tried to wrangle the newborn kittens,

but with paraffin eyes they wandered under sofas

or woodpiles, and sometimes we found them dead

and piecemeal, the mother cat leaving only

what she couldn’t swallow. At nightfall,

resisting our pleas for red apples she’d be forced

to core and portion with a knife, my mother piles

the still pink-tinged shirts onto the front lawn.

As headlights flood the driveway, she slips her arms

inside shirttails, an origami wingspan

answering wind, answering the whooping calls.