her books

to the curb
goes all these books.
two hundred and eighty seven
she tells you.
cook books.
not a poem by yeats, or plath.
or wordsworth.
no Whitman
in the lot.
not a single verse by
poe.
no sonnets by the bard,
or limericks, or
rhymes
by Dickinson.
even e.e. cummings
has been
ignored.
cookbooks she says proudly,
patting her round
belly, all of them
cookbooks,
some with
a sauce
puddled dry upon the cover.