1. Dear Mother: You're one of those poems my dread shall always write around as if it harbors ticking bombs. Gun racks of a moving pen work fine for things we understand, but spit out seeds when death contains no memories of life beyond immobile cameras leaning into sepia. I'd really like to talk to you. Ask you if those Catholic stones were rocks or pebbles in your shoes? A triage or a broken fan-belt humming suffer in the wind. Ask you how it felt to be a runner-up in beauty pageants-- hoarding legs of mean mystique. Then bearing a child flown straight from aching womb to body casts-- long, long sets of surgeries with which to entertain her dolls. Ask how it felt to be a nurse-- sit by cribs so helplessly as mothers witnessing a fire with diddlysquat but terra cotta tears in tune with ways she cannot dowse raw flames or storm thick Normandy's of beaches lying in wait's fallow air for teenage years of set apart. I think of blood that bore your death as cherry juice-- I'd like to see its justice spray in shapes that I can comprehend. If guessing gilds clichés and art, I had Picassos of a mother hanging true in sacrifice. Poetry is just a hammer. People shape the points of nails.
2. Dear Child: |
