Flaubert’s Furniture Arrangements

 

Page 6

 
a barometer over a piano warns dust collects among bric-a-brac
 
the heart longs for Mozart on days when there is no chance of
 
rain or Flaubert scratching his pen on unlined paper   asking
 
is Mozart better in spring    a hundred and sixty-three pages later
 
Madame Bovary slams the front door   the barometer
 
shatters     love letters scatter       like geese squabbling over
 
crumbs left on the side of the road by the old woman who snorts
 
thistle before Flaubert finishes his soup of ox-tails and onions

JoAnna Scandiffio

JoAnna Scandiffio is a poet and a gemologist living in San Francisco. Her poems have appeared in Poets 11 2016, Masque & Spectacle, Necessity is a Mother, Switched-on Gutenberg, and Sugared Water.

Copyright 2017, JoAnna Scandiffio


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