TUPPERWARE GOES BANKRUPT

by Jan Chronister

Tupperware Brands, whose name became synonymous with plastic food containers in kitchens across America, filed for bankruptcy protection on Tuesday after struggling for years with declining sales and increasing competition. —The New York Times, September 18, 2024

I was a Tupperware Lady,

stepped down in ’86,

turned in my company car

after years of demonstrating

how to burp a seal,

handing out tiny keychain bowls

to guests who brought a friend. 

I worked mostly at night,

came home to sleeping children.

During the day my kids played

in giant cardboard boxes

once full of wares

that I bagged up and delivered

to the women who helped me

make a living. 

One year I sold

$30,000 worth of the stuff.

It kept us in groceries,

paid the bills.

Now I have a drawer

full of incompatible

bottoms and tops

from a company no one

wants to support.

Plastic is out, parties take

too much time.

Women have better

things to do.

Jan Chronister splits her year between the far North and South. She gardens and writes poetry in both places. Her most recent book is Duluth: Zenith City & Beyond (Poetry Harbor).

KEEPING INDEPENDENCE

by Archana Sankaran

Old Beggar With a Boy - Pablo Picasso, 1903

I will keep my
strong sense of independence,
my fierce will,
precious freedom
and hopefully,
creative lust.
Until the minute coffers
where I pinned my
existential insecurities,
stand near empty.
But empty, it does not
scare me anymore.
I have seen empty,
spread those bowls of begging
and received often pity
but sometimes crumbs
that were and are of
much value to me.
That some people can
be kind, never mind if grudgingly
to strangers.
There certainly is
a clarity, a looking at truth
a freedom at empty.
Oh, what a wonderful
place I am at, tonight.
Happy at going to full.
And happy to get to empty.


Archana Sankaran is a poet based in India. She is also an artist . She finds writing poetry often emotionally cathartic. And is grateful for the gift of writing.