Your teeth are looking yellow
and your hands and face are spotty?
Don’t fret a smidge! Your stainless fridge
is one unblemished hottie.

Your arms have gotten squishy
and your gut’s no longer jocky?
Your counters (quartz!) are strong as forts,
and rockier than Rocky.

Whenever you feel foggy,
“smart” new lighting is omniscient.
Although you’re tired, your oven’s wired
and energy-ecient.

So never mind the birthdays
that you’re obviously rich in:
Spend big and—whee!—pretend to be
as youthful as your kitchen.

*****

Melissa Balmain writes: “If I have to become a middle-aged cliché, I at least want to get a poem out of it.”

‘Freud’ was first published in Crab Orchard Review.

Melissa Balmain’s third poetry collection, Satan Talks to His Therapist, is available from Paul Dry Books (and from all the usual retail empires). Balmain is the editor-in-chief of Light, America’s longest-running journal of comic verse, and has been a member of the University of Rochester’s English Department since 2010.

Photo: “New Kitchen” by Graeme_S is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.