Day 22: Flying pigs

Today was a good day.

Challenge 22: “Today, I’d like you to take one of the following statements of something impossible, and then write a poem in which the impossible thing happens: The sun can’t rise in the west. / A circle can’t have corners. / Pigs can’t fly. / The clock can’t strike thirteen. / The stars cannot rearrange themselves in the sky. / A mouse can’t eat an elephant.”

When will the pigs fly?

“I’m going to write a poem
about le porchette che volano,”
I announce
and he smiles.
He smiles a lot these days.
I know why.
He is disassembling
and reassembling
room by room.
There is stuff everywhere
but there is method to the madness.
The smell of cleaning agents
calms him.
The aisle with
home care products
is his favourite part of a shop.

He gave a salmon paint-over
to the smallest
and most concealed
space in our home
and left the light on
to illuminate it
just because it’s so pretty.

His zest
brushes off
and Manja –
the uncareful and discareless one
(who rushes off to
write down
these two words
announcing that
she is bound to do
this sort of thing
more often now
that she’s a poet)
first knocked down
two mattresses
that knocked down
an open tub of paint
that splashed all over
(you get the idea)
just trying to help,
and today spent her Sunday
cleaning the bedroom
of her own free will.

Her mom knows.
One time
she called Manja
and asked her what she was up to
and Manja replied
“I’m buying a broom.”

Obviously it happened then
and now it’s happening again.
Le porchette volano.
The pigs fly.

The salmon nook and the pasta curtain. (Nah.)

The porchetta in Volterra. Don’t learn Italian from me.