My Mother's Body Read Free

has trapped,
    like the rabbit in the fox’s jaws
    we feel the splintering of our bones
    and wait for the moment that still may flash
    the white space between pains
    when we can break free.
    It is the moment of damage
    when already the pricing mind
    tries to estimate cost and odds
    while the nerves lean on their sirens
    but the spine sounds a quiet tone
    of command toward a tunnel of moment
    that drills the air toward escape
    or death. I have been caught.
    Biology is destiny for all alive
    but at the instant of tearing
    open or free, the blood shrieks and
    all my mother’s mothers groan.

What remains
    These ashes are not the fine dust I imagined.
    The undertaker brings them out from the back
    in a plastic baggie, like supermarket produce.
    I try not to grab, but my need shocks me,
    how I hunger to seize this officially
    labeled garbage and carry you off.
    All the water was vaporized,
    the tears, the blood, the sweat,
    fluids of a juicy, steamy woman
    burnt offering into the humid Florida
    air among cement palm trees with brown
    fronds stuck up top like feather dusters.
    In the wind the palmettoes clatter.
    The air is yellowed with dust.
    I carry you back North where you belong
    through the bumpy black December night
    on the almost empty plane stopping
    at every airport like a dog at posts.
    Now I hold what is left in my hands
    bone bits, segments of the arched skull
    varicolored stones of the body,
    green, copper, beige, black, purple
    fragments of shells eroded by storm
    that slowly color the beach.
    Archeology in a plastic baggie.
    Grit spills into my palms:
    reconstruct your days, your odyssey.
    These are fragments of a smashed mosaic
    that formed the face of a dancer
    with bound feet, cursing in dreams.
    At the marriage of the cat and dog
    I howl under the floor.
    You will chew on each other’s bones
    for years. You cannot read
    the other’s body language.
    On the same diet you starve.
    My longest, oldest love, I have brought
    you home to the land I am dug into.
    I promise a path laid right to you,
    roses to spring from you, herbs nearby,
    the company of my dead cats
    whose language you already know.
    We’ll make your grave by piney woods,
    a fine place to sit and sip wine,
    to take the sun and watch the beans
    grow, the tomatoes swell and redden.
    You will smell rosemary, thyme,
    and the small birds will come.
    I promise to hold you in the mind
    as a cupped hand protects a flame.
    That is nothing to you. You cannot
    hear. Yet just as I knew when you
    really died, you know I have brought
    you home. Now you want to be roses.

My mother’s body
1 .
    The dark socket of the year
    the pit, the cave where the sun lies down
    and threatens never to rise,
    when despair descends softly as the snow
    covering all paths and choking roads:
    then hawk-faced pain seized you
    threw you so you fell with a sharp
    cry, a knife tearing a bolt of silk.
    My father heard the crash but paid
    no mind, napping after lunch,
    yet fifteen hundred miles north
    I heard and dropped a dish.
    Your pain sunk talons in my skull
    and crouched there cawing, heavy
    as a great vessel filled with water,
    oil or blood, till suddenly next day
    the weight lifted and I knew your mind
    had guttered out like the Chanukah
    candles that burn so fast, weeping
    veils of wax down the chanukiyot.
    Those candles were laid out,
    friends invited, ingredients bought
    for latkes and apple pancakes,
    that holiday for liberation
    and the winter solstice
    when tops turn like little planets.
    Shall you have all or nothing
    take half or pass by untouched?
    Nothing you got,
Nun
said the dreidl
    as the room stopped spinning.
    The angel folded you up like laundry
    your body thin as an empty dress.
    Your clothes were curtains
    hanging on the window of what had
    been your flesh and now was glass.
    Outside in Florida shopping plazas
    loudspeakers blared Christmas carols
    and palm trees were decked with blinking
    lights. Except by the tourist
    hotels, the beaches were