Courtney Bambrick
Fifteen Minutes, Montgomery Mall
&
Refrigerator’s Mother
Fifteen Minutes, Montgomery Mall
No stranger has ever called me
beautiful unless selling
hand lotion from a kiosk.
One woman, though, while I was trying
flats at Parade of Shoes, placed her hand
on my downturned face
and said,
So pretty.
Sudden need to check my pocketbook, let flattery
not distract. But she made no other move.
Just: So pretty; just: her hand. As if she knew
how blank and empty I had felt
in my frozen yogurt uniform
on my frozen yogurt break.
Refrigerator’s Mother
Today I started making a list of worries:
A short list of the trouble I anticipate.
Yesterday, half a dozen eggs
leapt from the refrigerator door
and I got onto the floor with
sodden paper towels and,
just like that, I see how easy it is
to fuck up an afternoon.
A mess of eggshells is nothing to cry over, like
spilled milk, or ketchup; so, I don't cry.
I simply move plummeting eggs
to the “worry” column from
the “never consider” column.
Worry makes me close and open the fridge
with gentle care, like it is the arm of a sleeping baby.
Shhh, the eggs will be fine. Shhh.
Worry has turned me into the refrigerator’s mother.
The eggs’ mother. The mother of the floor. Mother
of all paper towels. I will worry about new children every day.
Every day, new fears. A mother's love knows no limit.
Courtney Bambrick was poetry editor at Philadelphia Stories 2010-2024. She teaches writing at Thomas Jefferson University’s East Falls campus in Philadelphia. Her own poems appear in Landlocked Magazine, Pinhole Poetry, Thimble, SWWIM Everyday, New York Quarterly, Invisible City, and more.