Reader Submissions

Well-Known Corners of the People

How pleasing is this strip of yellow:

the folded felt blanket on the brown corduroy couch.

On a grey day, this yellow brings light into the room

and when the sun shines

it greets the faint line of gold travelling along

the thick blue edge of the Persian rug. Around the corner

in the next room the sturdy, squat, yellow cupboard

shouts hello to the small yellow-bellied teapot

near the bananas and lemons over on the kitchen bench.

This wealth of yellow has no other purpose than to be its glorious self,

its clarity and personality is the opposite of mellow

and not the bleak yellow of sickness, jealousy or penury

as portrayed in the Spanish novel Ordesa with its yellow cover

that sits on top of the yellow Spanish dictionary in the lounge room.

In this house we are framed by a 1940s seriousness

of dark wooden floors, doors and skirting boards

that approves nonetheless of the gum grey-green,

the muted white and the avocado-lime we put on its walls.

The photos on the fridge of last year’s Pride march

flash pink and inside the fridge is a pot of yellow soup

no less – pumpkin and ginger – waiting its turn for lunch.

On the sink the dishes, recently washed, drain beneath

the ticking clock – a pragmatic black and white

bought long ago for twenty dollars and still counting the seconds.