POETRY BY RITA MOOKERJEE

LOVE POEM FOR MARIE KONDO

Marie, I have learned to fold

from scores of denim in the blue jean wall at the Gap,

from crisp tissue around pottery and glass bracelets, 

from my waist and knees as I fold for b-boys and sous chefs 

who trace my tattoos with their fingers, then stop calling in a week, 

but, Marie, compared to your origami linens and taut towels

I only know how to make a mess because when you fold, 

it is science, it is art, and I crave your cotton geometry. 

Marie, how do you button your cardigan to the neck?

I picture your closet of colored knits and skater skirts

curled and perched like macarons in the window of Ladurée 

Like drop-pearl earrings, your minimalism is opulent

and I wonder how you learned this sense of restraint,

how you resist hoarding and heaping, stocking and cramming.

Don’t you want to roll your eyes at American families

with photo albums stacked to brush the ceiling?

Marie, how do you stand white women on talk shows

with their clumsy one-liners and bug-eyes as you fold 

to greet the audience, fold again to thank the space?

They search for clues in your hand movements, for a shred 

of English on the path away from clutter. When you speak, 

America’s brow knits like the embroidery on your dress, but to me, 

your voice is a hummingbird’s heart, bright with nectar. 

Marie, they want your secrets, I wish that you wouldn’t share them. 

I imagine your method is only for me, how you’d gasp at the monotony 

of my closet and force me to stop hoarding black tunics and candles 

and old train tickets from Taipei. Marie, I bought a plastic honeycomb 

for storing my lipsticks, sixty or more, and they’re mostly brown-beige. 

What is the name of your lipstick? Marie, my mother says that women 

are most beautiful with hair pulled back in a bun, and I’d like to see 

how you put yours up, maybe in one coil with a lonely pin? I know 

that your bun would be sleek, but soft, and how is it that you balance 

firmness with grace? Marie, you are most beautiful when you tell 

people to throw away their rats’ nests of receipts, their stacks 

of sentimental trash, leaving desks spotless and drawers neat. 

Marie, I wish we met at sixteen so you could watch me tie 

my pointe shoes, their folded ribbons taut at my ankles. 

Marie, forget tidy; for you, I would scrub clean.

Rita Mookerjee holds a PhD in literature from Florida State University. Her poetry is featured in Aaduna, GlitterMOB, Sinister Wisdom, Berfrois, and Cosmonauts Avenue. Her critical work has been featured in the Routledge Companion of Literature and Food, the Bloomsbury Handbook to Literary and Cultural Theory, and the Bloomsbury Handbook of Twenty-First Century Feminist Theory. She is also a poetry staff reader for The Southeast Review and [PANK].