Introduction by Ted Kooser: I’d guess everybody reading this has felt the guilt of getting rid of belongings that meant more to somebody else than they did to you. Here’s a poem by Jennifer Maier, who lives in Seattle. Don’t call her up. All her stuff is gone.

Rummage Sale 

Forgive me, Aunt Phyllis, for rejecting the cut

glass dishes—the odd set you gathered piece

by piece from thirteen boxes of Lux laundry soap.

Pardon me, eggbeater, for preferring the whisk;

and you, small ship in a bottle, for the diminutive

size of your ocean. Please don’t tell my mother,

hideous lamp, that the light you provided

was never enough. Domestic deities, do not be angry

that my counters are not white with flour;

no one is sorrier than I, iron skillet, for the heavy

longing for lightness directing my mortal hand.

And my apologies, to you, above all,

forsaken dresses, that sway from a rod between

ladders behind me, clicking your plastic tongues

at the girl you once made beautiful,

and the woman, with a hard heart and

softening body, who stands in the driveway

making change.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2013 by Jennifer Maier from her most recent book of poems, Now, Now, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013. Poem reprinted by permission of Jennifer Maier and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.