(from Course)

​

Mornings Before the Texas High-Noon Heat 

My mother hauled the white plastic basket to the yard,

an apron with pockets full of wooden pins

tied around her post-partum waist. She set the basket

down in yellow mortal grass, the smell of bleach

stirring up from hard-wrung cloth. But first

she had to move along the lines plucking

slugs from their precarious perches, shiny

acrobats stretched out in slender viscous arcs

high and clean in the dry morning air.

Each one she plucked, dozens of them some days,

she threw down, smashed with her shoe,

one silken body at a time, pressing each

into the red dirt. And when she'd cleared

the slugs she stroked a cloth along the lines

before shaking out panties, handkerchiefs,

white shirts, pillowcases, her Sunday dress,

washcloths and teatowels, diapers, draping their corners

lightly, pinning them fast, and then going

back into the house to wash her hands, to start

another load, sit before a fan, her skirt

pulled up above her knees, and cool down

enough to move to the piano where she

practiced Chopin while the washer spun and

the sun cast human shadows across the silver smudges.