Defrosted Landscape

The power cut was over,
the lights came on and the TV
muttered to life. They opened my door
to fetch a few bottles of beer
and then forgot about me,
standing in the shadows,
my mushy insides knotting
with ice crystals, shuddering.

A week later, they found it,
the source of a lingering stink
they blamed on the kitchen sink:
a sinister landscape of bacteria
with salmonella and listeria,
hairy fungi fruiting fluffy spores
on the wrinkly remains of beetroot,
for consumption (human or otherwise) unfit.

Kim M. Russell, 2017

Close up of beet mold
Image found in rotten food landscapes by Heikki Leis at telegraph.co.uk

My response to dVerse Poets Pub Tuesday Poetics: Chilling Out!

Lillian says that a refrigerator is something most of us take for granted – unless we’re camping, lose our electricity, or because it dies of old age. Her story about trying to replace one in a high-rise with a galley kitchen requiring a very narrow refrigerator was eye-opening for me – living in a cottage with a fairly spacious kitchen, I’d not thought about it. But I can appreciate Lill’s fridge fetish now she finally has a new one!

Which is why, for today’s prompt, Lill wants us to walk into our kitchens, open our refrigerators and take a good look. What’s in it? What’s way in the back on the bottom shelf? What’s in the freezer? What’s on the outside? Magnets? Pictures? Kids’ drawings?

She asks us to pick something specific that resides in or on the outside of the fridge, and let it be the inspiration for our poems. We should include the specific item in the body of our poems and can include more than one item if we wish. We can be fanciful, serious or just chill with Lill!

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43 thoughts on “Defrosted Landscape”

      1. Who ya gonna call…? Ghost Busters!! There’s a bit of fiction in that story, Kim. A ghost that hangs out in the frig. Might be a fun kid lit project – turns into a food fight, maybe?

        Liked by 1 person

  11. I had a roommate in the Air Force who got an assignment to Germany. I never knew he had used the dorm room refrigerator, and I only kept soda in there. When cleaning it for a dormitory inspection, I discoverer three furry green puff-balls in the vegetable drawer. As I watched them burst apart as they descended into the trash dumpster, I remembered he always was eating oranges. No smell to speak of, but I never was able to get the green rings out of the plastic of the drawer.

    Yeah, refrigerators are like that! Great poem. Couldn’t look at the image, though.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

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