Lizzie derksen

I run around collecting bottles,
folding the chairs up,
and putting the turkey carcass on to boil
in a pot of water and bay leaves. Lucy calls.
Susan can tell her I am not one
to dispense with a bay leaf.

And she can tell her
we ate mashed potatoes for breakfast.
We have mashed potatoes for days.
For days, Susan and I will do
something women never get to do
and eat exclusively food someone else made.

Because all our friends came.
We cleaned the toilet and stuffed the turkey
and set up a table in every room.
We scattered tealights everywhere
and our straight friend lit her hair on fire.

We've all watched Little Women;
we all know what burning hair smells like.
And don't we all know the party
was improved by it?

I orchestrated it. Not that I meant
to torch her, but I meant
to host a party at which events might transpire.

Now Lucy is on speaker.
Susan is reassuring her.
I am taking pictures of stray Tupperware
and posting them to the private internet,
along with a picture of a pair of gloves
Susan says she might like to keep.

I say that when it comes to non-perishables,
it is the hostess's job to run the lost and found.

I point out that we now have a wine rack.
I mean that a shelf in our kitchen is,
abruptly, full of wine.

Let Lucy call us inconsistent bitches.

We poured ourselves into that party,
and now we can live on it for a long time.

Lizzie Derksen is a writer and filmmaker from Treaty 6 Territory. She writes poems about Aunt Rachel, Rachel’s wife Susan, and their niece Lucy. She writes prose about the priest class, the worker class, and her childhood spent in a religious community in southern Saskatchewan.

Lizzie has published poems in earlier issues of Funicular and you can read more ‘Aunt Rachel’ poems by her on the Funicular website all this week. You can purchase her chapbook Aunt Rachel Says 13 Poems here.

Read Lizzie’s Funicular Five where she talks with us more about her Aunt Rachel poems here.

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