Zelda's Inferno exercise: "avocado green"

Posted on: Sun, 08/14/2011 - 20:54 By: Tom Swiss

Zelda's Inferno exercise: write about place, springboarding from the following wordlist:

shove
avocado
burnt umber
ADD
dragonfly
chopsticks
frail
whoa
bumpy
spider
candlestick
brochure

avocado green appliances
in the kitchen where the frail woman stands
the wheezing refrigerator is 1970s vintage, half her age --
a wedding present from long ago

a take-out menu, a flier from the neighborhood watch
stuck to it with a dragonfly magnet
she looks at them and thinks of the story of her life as
told by what has been stuck to her refrigerator

long ago there were recipes, household hints
     columns clipped from the newspaper
then a small boy's fingerpaints
family vacation snapshots
for a rough two years, the second-notice bills
      that had to be paid as soon as money came in
wedding invitations
birth announcements

a lifetime told on a
field of avocado green