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How It’s Written To my sister
A definition of mother that comes from absence where a body fell and never got back up the way the bed’s mattress became a sunken memory of her even when she was finally gone What becomes of all this of a brother and two sisters and a closet which can’t close It’s just perception A constructed reality I could write asphalt and bare feet in noon sun I could write a river with large slick rocks It’s just words How to re-member words so slick I can’t trust them I can’t turn the page on them moss-covered rocks along a rushing river We are back to the river So swollen, dangerous even a deer has drowned here at this Y this Y this Y right here The poetry teacher says, “How will all these details add up?” “That’s what I want to know,” I say. Before the Alzheimer’s the story goes she was such a peach it was so different But it wasn’t she wasn’t any different I don’t feel sorry for us now The past is simply true like a table a door a garage Suffering’s over-rated even if you do it well Her tombstone (we laugh) it will say Hated every minute of it She’ll want her money back for this free ride that just wasn’t worth it A mother who doesn’t love you is simply a mother who doesn’t love You Separate as you are now from her
A Stranger of Your Own You know you’re not here forever when your best friend tells you, “I have HIV.” You call her a liar because that’s better than the truth. You throw paint into the air to show nothing sticks.
As a guest performer, you say, Presto chango, and the walls that shaped the room are now cages. You say, Abracadabra, and god becomes the pink eraser on the pencil’s end, chewed, and never enough for all the mistakes.
You say, Where have I been all my life? Leaving your body on the bed, you rise through the smooth white ceiling, through the roof and into the sky with your heart beating in your ears: I am I am I am.
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