“Considering Rest” by Terry Hall Bodine

Frederick Carl Frieseke, Rest, ca. 1916, oil on canvas. Purchase made possible by the Fine Arts Fund, 1930. Collection of the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College, founded as Randolph-Macon Woman’s College.

after Frederick Carl Frieseke’s Rest

Keeping up appearances
is tiring, particularly when love,
that did the heavy lifting,
has atrophied, gone slack
from disuse and lack of interest.
The coffee service, the clotted
cream, the scones with raisins
burnt to bursting. Your cousin’s
insipid monologue. Your sister’s
tit for tat. I pinch a sallow

leaf from the centerpiece,
I swallow dry crusts of aspersion
before I must needs spit them out.
Rising to the bait of where’s
the sugar? is there cake?
I smooth my skirts and quit
the table. In a guest room
where colors pale under
the scrutiny of sun, I stretch
onto a low chintz chaise.

I can’t be bothered even
to take off my shoes.