LINDA
WASHINGTON, D.C.
My name is Linda, and I love cooking rotting food
My kitchen has all kinds of wonderful molds for salmon mousse, bombe mold, Mongolian firepot, got that bag of sugar with mice in it
Food is like creativity and possibilities in life jar of old nuts with bugs
But I don’t have a working refrigerator black sludge
When I buy food, I hang it from the chandelier in order to keep the rats from getting into Safeway bag slowly rotating with moldy hummus, CVS bag with stale Special K, Yes Organic Market bag with blackened corn, Safeway bag with shriveled lettuce, CVS bag with stale Fruit Loops, Yes Organic Market bag with puckered granny apples, Safeway bag with budding onions, CVS bag with stale Cheerios, Yes Organic Market bag with old organic indecipherable
It’s as if somebody took a municipal garbage dump and just dumped it into kitchen cabinets streaked with brown goo
Or a swamp thing growing a new life form in the basement tub of old chicken bones, sweating
Or an evil witch from a fairy tale rotting peach
Or Texas Chainsaw Massacre dead squirrel in a butter dish
My daughter threatens me that everything could be condemned, that the house could fall in upside down egg carton with a postcard of the sky on it
Because I’m not doing enough to maintain kitchen sink piled with years old dirty dishes
This is a million dollar neighborhood and the neighbors are not happy, so they’ve called the zoning board smashed Starbucks cup with X2 2M N WE M handwritten on it, and rat poop on it
I’ve been living in this house about thirty years, but it was much different before 25-year-old blackened candy
It was spotless on the kitchen mantle, a figurine of an Italian villa wrapped in plastic
My husband was an abusive sociopath fossilized rat
It was like living with Jim Jones dirty unmarked bottles of black liquids
It was constantly up and down—very good, and very bad 20-year-old hot sauce that belonged to her husband that she doesn’t even like
I love you, I love you, I love you, move out, I can’t stand you apple, apple, apple, that thing in the peanut butter jar isn’t peanut butter
Even though I kept a beautiful home, he convinced me I was maggot larva
He didn’t like me to do any artwork or any crafts, so that’s why I channeled my creativity toward The Taste of Mexico, The Jewish Cookbook, Flavors of Portugal, From Hearth to Cookstove, Vegetarian Times, Scandinavian Cooking, First Ladies’ Cookbook, Julia Child’s Kitchen Wisdom
My daughter tried to convince me that the food I cooked was weird apple pie with raw chicken hearts
What’s weird about dried mealworm bodies ground up to make nice cookies oven window black with mold
She encouraged me to give up cooking and do more painting Linda made of herself looking into a hand mirror with harrowed eyes; surrounding the mirror in the painting are perfume bottles and flowers
I save old soda cans because the tin snips can be used as flowers dried orange peels Linda put on the radiator so when it turns on the house smells of oranges and rot
My husband tried to keep me from going to the doctor because I would have found out he’d given me venereal disease, so it got worse and worse flies buzzing room to room
He left me when I was sick and then I started to lose my grip on the house over the kitchen window, a cloth with cut fruit on it
I had gone through so much, I had cried so much, and I’d gone into a frozen state old ice chest piled with oozing Breyers ice cream, popsicle sticks smothered in goo, dirty ceramic snowman, First Alert smoke alarm box, burlap Jesus, Marcus Aurelius bust wearing sunglasses
One day I might make make another mistake and eat cracked pineapple jar with something black inside
LINDA
WASHINGTON, D.C.
My name is Linda, and I love cooking rotting food
My kitchen has all kinds of wonderful molds for salmon mousse, bombe mold, Mongolian firepot, got that bag of sugar with mice in it
Food is like creativity and possibilities in life jar of old nuts with bugs
But I don’t have a working refrigerator black sludge
When I buy food, I hang it from the chandelier in order to keep the rats from getting into Safeway bag slowly rotating with moldy hummus, CVS bag with stale Special K, Yes Organic Market bag with blackened corn, Safeway bag with shriveled lettuce, CVS bag with stale Fruit Loops, Yes Organic Market bag with puckered granny apples, Safeway bag with budding onions, CVS bag with stale Cheerios, Yes Organic Market bag with old organic indecipherable
It’s as if somebody took a municipal garbage dump and just dumped it into kitchen cabinets streaked with brown goo
Or a swamp thing growing a new life form in the basement tub of old chicken bones, sweating
Or an evil witch from a fairy tale rotting peach
Or Texas Chainsaw Massacre dead squirrel in a butter dish
My daughter threatens me that everything could be condemned, that the house could fall in upside down egg carton with a postcard of the sky on it
Because I’m not doing enough to maintain kitchen sink piled with years old dirty dishes
This is a million dollar neighborhood and the neighbors are not happy, so they’ve called the zoning board smashed Starbucks cup with X2 2M N WE M handwritten on it, and rat poop on it
I’ve been living in this house about thirty years, but it was much different before 25-year-old blackened candy
It was spotless on the kitchen mantle, a figurine of an Italian villa wrapped in plastic
My husband was an abusive sociopath fossilized rat
It was like living with Jim Jones dirty unmarked bottles of black liquids
It was constantly up and down—very good, and very bad 20-year-old hot sauce that belonged to her husband that she doesn’t even like
I love you, I love you, I love you, move out, I can’t stand you apple, apple, apple, that thing in the peanut butter jar isn’t peanut butter
Even though I kept a beautiful home, he convinced me I was maggot larva
He didn’t like me to do any artwork or any crafts, so that’s why I channeled my creativity toward The Taste of Mexico, The Jewish Cookbook, Flavors of Portugal, From Hearth to Cookstove, Vegetarian Times, Scandinavian Cooking, First Ladies’ Cookbook, Julia Child’s Kitchen Wisdom
My daughter tried to convince me that the food I cooked was weird apple pie with raw chicken hearts
What’s weird about dried mealworm bodies ground up to make nice cookies oven window black with mold
She encouraged me to give up cooking and do more painting Linda made of herself looking into a hand mirror with harrowed eyes; surrounding the mirror in the painting are perfume bottles and flowers
I save old soda cans because the tin snips can be used as flowers dried orange peels Linda put on the radiator so when it turns on the house smells of oranges and rot
My husband tried to keep me from going to the doctor because I would have found out he’d given me venereal disease, so it got worse and worse flies buzzing room to room
He left me when I was sick and then I started to lose my grip on the house over the kitchen window, a cloth with cut fruit on it
I had gone through so much, I had cried so much, and I’d gone into a frozen state old ice chest piled with oozing Breyers ice cream, popsicle sticks smothered in goo, dirty ceramic snowman, First Alert smoke alarm box, burlap Jesus, Marcus Aurelius bust wearing sunglasses
One day I might make make another mistake and eat cracked pineapple jar with something black inside
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kate Durbin is a Los Angeles-based artist, writer, and filmmaker whose work focuses on popular culture. Her books include E! Entertainment (Wonder), The Ravenous Audience (Akashic Books), and the collaboration ABRA (1913 Press). ABRA is also a free, interactive iOS app that is “a living text,” which won the 2017 Turn On Literature Prize for electronic literature. The project was partly funded by an NEA grant from the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago. In 2015, she was the Arts Queensland Poet-in-Residence in Brisbane, Australia.
Kate’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Art in America, Art Forum, XO Jane, Nylon, Casa Vogue, Yale’s American Scholar, NPR, The Creator’s Project, Public Art Dialogue, ArtSlant, Poets and Writers, DAZED, BOMB, poets.org, The American Poetry Review, Flavorwire, Best American Experimental Writing, PennSound, The Pulitzer Foundation and elsewhere. Her website is www.katedurbin.la.
ABOUT THE MANUSCRIPT
Hoarders continues the style of writing I developed for my last book, E! Entertainment. I call this form “literary television.” The book is inspired by the reality TV show, Hoarders, and I created it while closely watching the show. Reality TV is a cultural artifact, revealing truths about our human condition. My aim with literary television is always clear seeing, and to look at the people on the show without judgement. My book Hoarders explores the relationship between people and things in consumer-capitalist America. Each poem is a portrait of a person and the objects that they hoard.
Editors Note: Read Kate Durbin discussing Hoarders at KeepItDirty.org