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45. Duster, Maple, Turned Handle
by Kelley White
original ebonized finish, wire hanger,
iridescent turquoise, fuchsia, and orange
wool with blue leather trim, sold by Canterbury
Shakers and never used, 24” l; and a single
Canterbury peg on a backboard. $700
We receive many orphans. The boys stay
no longer than our eighth grade. Many girls leave
also to summer day labor on farms in the county
or to the new mills along the Amoskeag and Merrimack.
Here we manufacture also. Goods for the World.
Pretty things. Useful as our own but with frivolity
of color. What trade bears.
Now that we are a city of women, aging, we choose
lighter industries. We have sold off the dairy herd.
Brother Elmer hires men from Loudon and even Gilmanton
for the haying. We stack bales in an earnest brigade
of women, arms prickly with stubbled straw. We stack wood
by eager relay. We cart and carry. But only so much.
So this delicate work in wool. The girls take to it neatly.
Summer and winter. Practical skill they may take from us.
Kelley White
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A New Hampshire native, Kelley White studied at Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School and has been a pediatrician in inner-city Philadelphia for more than twenty years. Mother of three, she is an active Quaker. Her poems have been widely published over the past five years, including several book collections and chapbooks, and have appeared in numerous journals including Exquisite Corpse, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Rattle and the Journal of the American Medical Association.
EMAIL: kelleywhitemd@yahoo.com
KELLEY WHITE IN THIS EDITION:
POETRY: Apple Sorting Chair, Birch and Pine
POETRY: Basket Form and Rare Pitch Pipe, Maple
POETRY: Duster, Maple, Turned Handle
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