Category: Mother

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Counterbalance

                It was horrible but it wasn’t all horrible.
                —Cecilia Woloch

Afterward, it was the satisfaction of paying a debt, except
she wasn’t one of those mothers who made us feel
as if we owed her for childbirth and raising us.
It was knowing I didn’t shirk changing the colostomy bag
or dressing the disfigured zipper of staples that closed
her wound, breastbone to groin.

Once I woke to a midnight crash: her with a halo of blood
on the bathroom floor.
It was knowing I could love like that.

Mealtimes, she would frown, push away child’s portions
no matter what recipe I tried, except the marijuana-pill night
when at 10 p.m. she asked me to bake a cake,
and I called my sister: Mum has the munchies!

Chemo shrank her into a stooped monk in a hooded robe.
Strands of fine hair littered her pillow
until it was time to shop for a wig.
I tried on some too. We laughed when I looked worse than she did.
She sprang for the expensive one, nicknamed it Dixie,
felt almost pretty.

And she recovered: her sweetness, generosity,
pain-in-the-ass-ness, even her hair for seven years.
Then it was hearing cancer again from the doctor
who didn’t want to say it, and me expelling the word
like a magician pulling a grenade from my mouth.

I hoped hospice spoke the truth, that it was okay not to feed her,
that her mostly closed eyes, the rambling words
meant she was processing what she needed to: memories,
reconciliations, the willingness to go.
Then, it was knowing she had checked off her final item
when my brother arrived, recovered from his own cancer,
and she woke for a last moment to say his name, Philip.

—Karen Paul Holmes, from No Such Thing as Distance

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Captain Depth Perception

I see you like space
between my car and the raised
bumper of an F150 sitting
wider than yellow parking lines.
I know when to brake and back
up, when to cut the wheel
so I turn just far enough
into your space, filling it
with so much of myself that
almost I fill it all, almost
I feel the crunch of fender and truck.
My power saves
paint jobs at a price.
Every hero has her heal.
Mine’s the depth I can’t stop
sensing, a constant knowledge
of our world packed tight,
nearing collision, and the fear
of someone cutting too sharp,
closing the space completely.
At night I know twin lights
of speeding cars enough
to pull out and see we’re safe
in our sufficient depth of space.

—Marcus Goodyear, from Barbies at Communion, T. S. Poetry Press

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Set

After raspberry pancakes
Mom declared
in our olive-green kitchen:
today, I’ll teach you to swing.

She hoisted her own
thick hips
into the black smile
next to me

pumped sky
in her stone washed jeans.

Just gotta lean
into it.

Then below that bar of rust,
her seat suddenly

snapped.

She gripped the old chains—stuck the landing.
Remember our laugh?

Lung-crush of hilarity
while everyone else
held their
          breath.

—Bethany Rohde, from Casual: A Little Book of Jeans Poems & Photos, T. S. Poetry Press

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Cooking Class, Illinois, Mid 70s

Along her immaculate counter: silo
of red-handled sifter, bright order
of silver spoons, lemon bales of butter

softening in late winter light. In cupboards
her husband the carpenter built, bars
of Baker’s Chocolate, dried figs, quartered

apricots and Mason Jars of brined harvest.
A good cook puts up her hair, wears
apron, stores flour in freezer to keep

Boll Weevils out, uses shells of her egg
as a tool to separate yolk from white.
She also wears dresses, I learned

when, for donning jeans, she informed me
she no longer wished me to babysit. She cited,
over the phone to my mother, the effect

it might have on her son, the kind of wife
he might choose, the man he’d become
as I chased him on my hands and knees round

the living room’s glass table she refused to move
when he was born. He’d learn, she’d said, he’d learn
soon enough, where he stopped and she began.

— Tania Pryputniewicz, from Casual: A Little Book of Jeans Poems & Photos, T. S. Poetry Press

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Who Am I?

“Let’s go for a walk,”
she’d say, and then my mother
would circle the block. I’d question
why we couldn’t go farther. My body
could handle it. But Merry
Nell’s couldn’t. She needed a horcrux

or, perhaps, more than one horcrux.
To figure that out, she’d need a longer walk
through the neighborhood. She’d be merry,
as she always was. I am a mother
who likes to push her body.
There’s no question

about it. But every day I question
why I am her horcrux.
Why everybody seems to think that I am walking her walk,
that I am mothering like my mother.
It’s true. My name is also Merry,

and I also chose to marry
at 21. That is not the question.
I need to know how to mother
without one. All I have is a horcrux,
one I bring with me each morning I take a walk:
my own body.

But it’s acting strangely, my body.
It’s giving me signs, as yours did, Merry
Nell. Oh, it still can walk
up actual mountains. But I do question
because it doesn’t feel like mine. It feels like a horcrux.
I feel like I am you, my dear, dead mother.

And I’m not, am I? Holy Mary, mother
of God. Pray. You’re not here in body.
Neither is my mom. She’s only a horcrux.
She wasn’t into you, Mary. She didn’t even have a question
about you. Not even when she couldn’t walk.

Like Harry, I am the horcrux. I am not my mother.
I can still walk, and I still dwell in this body.
But I am Merry Megan. No question.

—(Merry) Megan Willome, from The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press

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Blue Moon

Mom gets two full moons, one early,
one on New Year’s Eve eve when
we talk as only mothers and daughters can—
speech as rocky as the lunar surface.

After she’s gone will I still orbit her earth?
Will her tides still move my every wave?

I am standing alone, waving goodbye.
She will ring in the new year with dreams in her heart,
with the love of her own dear husband, who adores her,
who wishes me a safe drive as I look
in my rearview mirror and the moon
has indeed turned to gold.

—Megan Willome, from The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press

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On the Eve of Your Thirteenth Birthday

for Jeffrey

the last day of twelve
was nothing special,
you said.
you didn’t dress for gym,
didn’t play four-square with
the others. only walked,
you said.

In English, you wrote
a myth…about Gusano—
it means worm in Spanish
you said.
this Greco-Spanish
worm-god found freedom,
you said.
but he led his people
back into the
earth to rule the Underworld
and that’s why he will
be responsible for
the zombie apocalypse,
you said.

and math was about
interest, like money and
banks, you know?
you said.
and you have homework
so you came home in
a bad mood and didn’t
want to talk about twelve
you said.

so i hushed and got out
the eggs, cracked them one-by-
one in the bowl and mixed until
those yellow eyes are gone; i
rubbed grease on the pan that is
swathed in black enamel
from years of cradling sweet
batter…and i poured more
in. you at the table building
up interest when the room
starts to smell like a birthday.

and suddenly, you are there,
beside to lick the batter from
the bowl. what time was I
born?
you said.

—Laura Boggess, featured in The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press

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Valentine’s Chai

Sitting in a sunny cafe, I call my parents
because I can’t stand to hear
bad news at home.
So I call from here, on my cell,
armed with chai.

She’s telling the doctor, No more.

She will leave his office with some pills
that will lengthen her sweet tooth in time
for Valentine’s Day.

I quaff my tea and head to the store
for candy hearts, chocolate hearts,
Reese’s peanut butter hearts, heart-shaped
cookies piled with icing—any
confectionary way to say I love you I love
you I love you I love you I love you.

—Megan Willome, from The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press

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Bottled Water

I go to the corner liquor store
for a bottle of water, middle
of a hectic day, must get out
of the office, stop making decisions,
quit obsessing does my blue skirt clash
with my hot pink flats; should I get
my mother a caregiver or just put her
in a home, and I pull open the glass
refrigerator door, am confronted
by brands—Arrowhead, Glitter Geyser,
Deer Park, spring, summer, winter water,
and clearly the bosses of bottled water:
Real Water and Smart Water—how different
will they taste? If I drink Smart Water
will I raise my IQ but be less authentic?
If I choose Real Water will I no longer
deny the truth, but will I attract confused,
needy people who’ll take advantage
of my realness by dumping their problems
on me, and will I be too stupid to help them
sort through their murky dilemmas?
I take no chances, buy them both,
sparkling smart, purified real, drain both bottles,
look around to see is anyone watching?
I’m now brilliantly hydrated.

—Kim Dower, from Slice of Moon, featured in The Joy of Poetry,
T. S. Poetry Press, by permission of Red Hen Press

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With My Mother, Missing the Train

With My Mother,
Missing the Train

She was always late. At the final minute
we’d run for the city train, which roared right past,
its line of faces scanning us not in it.
The world was turned to terror by the blast
of hot departing wheels. Air seized my mother,
crushing her flustered skirts into a flurry
with me there clinging. Hush, there’ll be another,
she’d say to keep me calm. No need to worry.
But there was a need. The speed of things was true
and rushing traffic urged us both ahead.
I wanted to race again, to burst right through
and make the great train wait. She never said
that missing things was serious, till I grew.
She held my hand more tightly than I knew.

—Helena Nelson, from Plot and Counterplot, featured in The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press, by permission of Shoestring Press