I Ask Forgiveness

My grandmother resurrects
          in flapping laundry, sheets

snapped to rectangles, then precisely
          folded. Her whites

a science of starch and bleach,
          she believed

in the household arts as daily practice,
          her love,

the perfect meeting of corners.
          Wherever she is now,

she knows I am apostate,
          all loads grey and hung

or shelved, once dry, still wrinkled.
          Bad as I am

at the task, I’m the best
          of my house.

At least for me, winter shirts open
          into caesura.

(after Laura Page “Winter Shirt”)

—

Devon Balwit teaches in Portland, OR. She has six chapbooks and two collections out or forthcoming. Her individual poems can be found here as well as in Cordite, The Ekphrastic Review, Poets Reading the News, Posit, and more.

Laura Page is a poet and artist from the Pacific Northwest. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Crab Creek Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal. The Rumpus, TINGE, and others. Her chapbook, epithalamium, was named the winner of Sundress Publications’ 2017 chapbook contest and is now available as an ebook. Her paintings have been featured recently in A-Minor Magazine, Long Exposure, and The Indianapolis Review.