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Keep the carton with the blue drummer, his drum bent round the corner,
one stick lifted above the place where milk has furred the bottom seam.
Keep the split flap, the white fibres across his cuff, the thumbprint darkening his shoulder
where somebody braced the box to shake another handful into the bowl.
Keep the kitchen’s other percussion: spoon against rim, pipe in the wall,
the loose square of linoleum snapping flat under my mother’s heel
when she crossed to the stove.
Under the table, my shoes without laces; above it, the raised stick, the bright cuff;
between them the tune going on after the radio was switched off.
At the other table: a blue swatch, a photograph of a fist around a spoon,
thirty years pencilled against a mouth still blurred by movement.
Keep the drum blue through revision; narrow the packet, shift the seam,
fit three more to the crate without disturbing the face that will look out at breakfast.
Keep the tune within reach of the high chair; let the last note stretch
while two wet hands open and close above the tray, open and close,
until somebody turns the box round.
The press operator pulls a proof, rubs the cuff where the colour has slipped;
at noon, bread unwrapped on the bench, that same blue in the nail-grooves.
Keep the pressure even.
Two bowls in the testing room, A and B inked under their rims, identical spoons;
through the glass a sleeve moves, a pencil waits, a woman asks for the better one.
Keep the answer where it falls: a finger in B, milk running down the knuckle;
the other hand turns the drummer to the wall.
Don’t tell him. Under preference, B; under recognition, a tick;
the pencil needs sharpening, its pale shavings gather beside the unopened packets.
Keep my mother’s receipt, then: onions, washing soda, the blue drum twice;
keep the sum at its foot, and the hair she blew from her mouth
carrying everything upstairs.
Keep her saying, Not with your teeth, and taking the box from me;
paste on the thumbnail, a torn white strip curling over the drummer’s painted mouth.
Keep the three pieces she stole from my bowl, the crunch behind her shut lips,
my spoon laid across the carton to prevent a second raid.
Do not clean the morning up: she was late, the radio too loud,
her hand held under my chin for the mouthful I would not swallow.
The plain bag she emptied into the printed box; the drummer stood in front, I ate,
she folded the bag small and tucked it in the drawer with the string.
She cut the empty carton flat for drawing; on the white inside I gave the drummer
a second drum, a gate, a dog too large to get through it,
pressing harder where the crayon skipped the fold.
Keep that side uppermost.
Aisle seven, cartons ranked by height; the tune starts somewhere behind the freezers
and my tongue puts the missing syllable in, dry with the taste of grain dust.
Keep the newer carton beside the old: the corner moved, the stick straightened;
my thumb still climbs the ridge where the drum used to be broken in two.
I say keep it, I say leave it; the packet stays in the crook of my arm beside the onions,
the receipt still a blank coil behind the till.
The cashier tears the total from its roll; outside, I change hands with the bag,
mouth the tune, lose it at the note my mother used to whistle.
The child at my table wants the scissors, the blue one, the little man;
her elbow catches the bowl and I move it without interrupting the song.
Not with your teeth, I say, and hold out my hand for the wet scrap;
the scissor point slides under the seam, lifting the cardboard in damp grey scales.
Keep the white side for drawing, I tell her, but she turns it over;
the drummer has lost one boot to the opening, his face holds its expression.
I cut towards the cuff; she bends so close her hair drags through the crumbs,
her finger travelling just ahead of the blade, directing the narrow, irregular margin.
Keep his hand, the child says, and I turn the cardboard under the scissors,
leaving the cuff, the wrist, a little of the white around it.