Tonight's Poet Corner: Do You Know The Kellers?

Do You Know The Kellers?
by Belinda Roddie

He holds her hand - stiff fingers,
starchy, like leftover rice in heat.
All the way through dinner, he does
this. She cannot lift her fork.
She cannot slice her steak. It sits
like a stone slab in front of her,
inscribed with the Ten Commandments.

She listens to the stories told
by an idiot in a bow tie. He opines
with the timbre and smile
of a bellowing jack-o-lantern.
If pumpkins could laugh and be
pompous, then the man is a pro
at the awkward antithesis
of a grinning tableau.

She remembers when she met
his wife, a beautiful nymph
with grass woven in her curls.
Snake bites decorated her calves,
and still, she knew how to dance.

Now her ankles are bound, and
her teeth are whittled into pearls,
and her lover compliments the bland
potatoes, which feel softer
in her mouth than her husband's
knuckles turning into petrified pulp
under the Kellers' orange tablecloth.