Marjorie Maddox
Professor of English at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University, Marjorie Maddox has published 14 collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); Begin with a Question (International Book and Illumination Book Award Winners); and the Shanti Arts ekphrastic collaborations Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (with photographer Karen Elias) and In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind, a collaboration with her artist daughter, Anna Lee Hafer (www.hafer.work) and others. How Can I Look It Up When I Don’t Know How It’s Spelled? Spelling Mnemonics and Grammar Tricks (Kelsay) and Seeing Things (Wildhouse) are forthcoming in 2024. In addition, she has published the story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite) and 4 children’s and YA books. With Jerry Wemple, she is co-editor of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania and the forthcoming Keystone: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (PSU Press) and is assistant editor of Presence. She hosts Poetry Momentat WPSU. See www.marjoriemaddox.com
Invited In
Well-groomed, bright smile, he waits for you
to answer his confident knock, the sing-songy bell.
When you peer out the cracked door, then
unselfconsciously swing the barrier wide,
he steps back deferentially, recites, as if for the first time,
“I’m your Fuller Brush Man, and I have a free gift for you.
I’ll just step in for a moment.” And that’s it.
Without knowing it, you’ve somehow invited him in,
accepted his famous Handy Brush, agreed to a live
demonstration on bristles and brush technologies and all
the sizes and shapes designed to perform those necessary
but hard-to-reach filthiest spots right there in your own
living room or kitchen that you already thought were clean,
oh, so clean, but now you understand otherwise and allow
the spontaneous-seeming but carefully prepared audition
to begin, because, after all, the households of J. D. Rockefeller,
Lyndon Johnson, Blondie and Dagwood, and Red Skelton
endorse this hardworking handsome man and trust their
cash and their wives to him as much as they would
(no, more so) than to the milkman, the postman,
the friendly neighbor Joe, the itinerant preacher, the handy-
man looking for a few extra jobs, the plumber, the electrician,
Tom, Dick, Harry, George, Harold, Dave, Bill, Arnold, Jack
the Ripper taking a break from the city, and later, John, Fred, Ted
Bundy, creeping in while you sleep, “Hello, I’m your
[fill-in-the-blank] man, and I have a free gift for you.
No need to trouble yourself. I’ll let myself in
and out.”
