teakettle

Other than the air traffic control equipment, there was little more than a metal cot, an electric teakettle, and a bookcase filled with old paperbacks.

The room felt like a museum of random ordinary objects; the walls held glass cases boasting keys, pendulums, coins, oven mitts, ropes, even teakettles, and more.

Something heavy pounced onto my chest as I slept, and my exhale whistled like Gran’s teakettle.

Pieces turn up in her paintings that are immediately recognizable to fellow Nigerians: a “Senator suit,” cabin biscuits, jerrycans, painted teakettles, braided hairstyles, clonette dolls.

Dougherty’s mother has a copper teakettle that crossed the Atlantic with Finnish ancestors, and Dougherty’s son has already called dibs on the piece.