mom n stuff

ya so, the reason i decd\ided to
not transfer things cuz done is done
i should go back and put a final
entry in. like round up got the weeds.
leave it for posterity. print
it into book form and watch the pages yellow.


for this mother's day ima do
some laundry and clean the fan
that sits in the third story window
like as in an attic, fighting
heat which drifts into feathery
cirrus sleep.

all my fight has left me
puppety limbs
rubbery hymns
slumbrous jambs and jellys
and the hydro release of fire.

speak in code. kinda rodes.
you're talking to your momma
and reelling in less drama
a call to arms, why does
he has the breakup of his
family to deal with.















*



when you were in your infancy
propped up in the lounge chair
i barely looked at you. how could
your poufy hair be gone?
your blue eyes paling held
all that you wouldn't ever
again be able to answer.
my questions come too late.

on mother's day 1978 i gave
you engraved silver, a silk rose.
to last. a few years later
dad dispersed the house
i took it wth me, lost
these many years in one move
to the next. cut off from
my past, no one triangulated
truth to be had.

here's a truth i once whispered
i hate you
like she hates me, foibles of time
and never enough of it. we are
such needy things, despising our weakness.


one memory: i carried it with me
whenever i looked at a portrait
which captured us, familia, how i
must have been upset with daddy
or scared somehow, but the photographer
made me sit in his lap, not hers
how i was not allowed to cry about it
put a li'l half smile on my face
momma held the baby. big sister
behind us. i think. somewhere i have
that portrait. i think i'll pass
on review this mother's day.

a seamstress. a needle a bobbin
acoutrements of measurement
pins and the dip of cutting board.
fly these eagles out of marekesh
into my sky blue dress, ric rac
on a full skirt. you pricked your fore
finger for love. or was that neccesity?
always you were somewhere inside yourself
private i could never go. your inner
strength, your faded denim dreaming.

you know, sister can't understand it.
y i don't visit your grave.
you were never there. what does she find?
i hold pictures which you touched
there must still be some measure
of your fingerprints there some evidence
you existed beyond the stifled image
cuaght like a birdwatched with binoculars,
anonymous and blonde.

maybe i simply project. was it all
that you wanted, that probity of children
the talisman of home, you the hearth?


i fought that trap but wound up
living it. the moves we made
from home to home who remembers
my small town name like your friend betty
did you ever escape to her was there drama
in your marriage? my memories are so overloaded
with self i remember nothing. save incidents
aroused from the printed photo. sis will sometimes
recall and i will stifle a no, nod yes
as if i too held something of the past within me.
my body has died by degrees six times, but this brain
must willing ly forget the soothing game
of find the states on the back of the cars, tags
of other countries anthing to keep us amuzed
on the long car rides that closely tied us
back to the mountains, the proximity of family
a nervewracking thing, the soothing clicks of the mother hen.
you must have been.
















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