Floormop Vansockbottle Wristboard: A Life

Abstract

Floormop Vansockbottle Wristboard: A Life Sandra Murray (bio) Chapter One In the village, men and women search all over the floor. Each wide board is a pine tree. The limbs have been lopped off, like wrists with no hands. High, echoing halls hide the lost socks of the village. A rag-bag mop on its splintered stick rakes leaves together—not up. Small domed windows made of milky glass bottle open wide for the breeze. The floor pattern is hieroglyphs in faded gold. Pine trees don’t realize they were seized for boards. Stumpy wrists are like shaved knots telling the story of life. The village men grow redder, and women blacken their ankles and feet to simulate socks. Up in attic rooms, the trash heap is leaking, in need of the mop. Crusty dishes and baby bottles clink a toast to a sudden whirlwind. The village was floored by the beautiful words they couldn’t decipher. The pitch-black secret is sealed in the cracks between the boards. Knots that lose their knuckles and handless wrists still have a way to tell time. All the socks glow bright yellow-ivory from dark corners. The mop-up took many villagers, toiling night and day under low ceilings. The 1964 Shiraz bottle corked off, and the wind died down. Chapter Two We sat on the back porch with the bottle. Large roomy spaces are easier to mop. One man was repeatedly socked by an angry village woman. Carpal tunnel often attacks the hand and wrist. Asylums that board women flourished, in great demand. They even studied the ancient, crumbling floor plans. [End Page 880] Gusts stream past, as if long ago bottled up. The man in the orange will mop once the ceilings are raised. Soon, there are no sock shops left. You can feel a pulse when you hold the wrist. The boards are unconscious. Antiquity is better on walls than floors. The man in orange stood looking for the bottle; or the genie. A mop remains in need of a bath, but too filthy with the soil of friends. Socked away, they were never again to be seen in the village. The hands of a clock have no wrists. Pine tree boards are soft, warm and durable. They stripped the floor, so we danced. [End Page 881] Sandra Murray Sandra Murray currently teaches fourth grade at PS23 in Brooklyn, NY, where she employs poetry as a learning strategy across the curriculum. Copyright © 2008 Charles H. Rowell