Ode to the Apron

In a TV commercial, Martha Stewart wears a white-and-green striped apron tied at her waist while hawking garden compost. Scrunching dirt in her fist. As if her wizardry cooks time with brown leaves, water, and warm wind. I guess she makes good money, but I’m reminded of jailbirds and aging witches. I Google aprons for children – the picture-ads are all girls. I’m not immune to the charms of chintz or gingham. I read old-fashioned books, watched TV in the fifties – June Cleaver and Lucy Ricardo. While I wanted to tie an apron over the head of Senator McCarthy and tighten its strings around his throat. When I went to college, my mother cut off the apron strings from her cotton apron and gave them to me. She didn’t mean I was free. She could still suffocate me. Now the three aprons I own are in a box destined for the non-profit store that sells donations to raise money for Habitat for Humanity. Maybe they’ll make enough to loan a trowel to a gardener or give a first-time homeowner a gold doorknob.

TRICIA KNOLL

Tricia Knoll’s The Unknown Daughter was a finalist in the 2025 New England Poetry Club chapbook contest. Her poems appear in journals as diverse as The Kenyon Review and New Verse News and in nine full-length or chapbook collections. She serves as a contributing editor to Verse Virtual. Website: triciaknoll.com.