September 2016
Ruth Moose
rumoo@email.unc.edu
rumoo@email.unc.edu
I taught creative writing at UNC-Carolina, was on the faculty for 15 years. Have published 6 collections of poetry most recently Tea and The Librarian. Available from Main Street Rag Press. My first novel, Doing it at the Dixie Dew won the Malice Domestic Prize from St. Martin's Press and was published last year. It has done well and the sequel, Wedding Bell Blues is due out 2016. Am working on the third one, Daylily Do Off at the Dixie Dew.
Dinner
All over the village
couples are cooking dinner.
She is chopping celery. He
is browning beef. She drops
noodles hard as thoughts
into roiling boiling water.
They each reach for the casserole
dish, blue ironstone, a daughter’s
gift a dozen Christmases ago.
He makes the sauce, though she
would have used one from the can.
She always did. He never knew.
He whisks and sways before the stove.
She thinks this is not the man
I married twelve million dinners ago.
This man is thick in the middle, bald.
His shoulders are narrow and his ears
so large they flap forward. He sips
red wine. Doctor’s orders. She sips
white. Her preference. She drains
the pasta, lifts a layer into the dish.
He adds beef, the sauce, and she
more pasta and cheese.
Bread in the machine puffs and browns
while she stirs rice pudding.
His favorite.
©2016 Ruth Moose
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