Tag: Mother
-
Reverb
Reverb” emerged from a moment of quiet recognition—when I realized I was speaking in my mother’s cadence, carrying her grief as if it were my own. The poem is built as a series of couplets that echo generational sorrow without resolving it. I wanted the rhythm to waver, to enact the instability of grief itself.…
-
Finalities
Finalities emerged from a moment of ritual clarity after my mother’s passing. I wanted to honor not just her memory, but the gestures others made to restore her—clipping her hair, dressing her in youth, renaming her Elsi. It stages mourning as a quiet choreography of speculative grace. It’s about the transformation of a woman into…
-
The Box My Mother Kept
The Box My Mother KeptI find her in a boxlabeled “Misc.”full of not-miscellaneous things:wrinkled receipts—pollo, jabón, stamps from the 70’s and 80’s,movie ticket stubs to matinee rom-coms—each neatly placed under curled daisy petals.Birthday cards with crooked suns,one written by my six-year-old selfin tortured handwriting trying to be tender:“Te amo, Mamá”in Sharpie and crayon.A drawing of…
-
Skin
SkinI felt the skin of my father—his thumb a soft shawlthat enveloped our intertwined hands.And when the embrace broke— how my tiny fingers traced the moss line of his skulluntil it became a familiar garden.How he would embrace mother, after-wards in her floral gown, so tenderly, thatI would sneak in later to smell the trace…
-
Olvidada (forgotten)
My mother’s name is lost to everyone beyond her children.“She was beautiful.What was her name?”,others would say to me when shown her image hanging silently on the wall.In the chanting of it—their wind echoes my death back in a cloud of disinterested kindnessand muttered miseries. They know only their faces, the renamed mountains and rivers,the…
-
A Hole in the Bucket
My mother was always a better singer than she was a cook. She may have burnt a lot of things but never missed a note, especially when Harry Belafonte came on the transistor kitchen radio-a voice so pure it made her cry with joy.“There’s a hole in the bucket dear Liza, dear Liza,” he sang…
-
The Cleansing Cycle
i like to cling to the grimethe small grit of my father’s ashesunderneath my fingernails, the part of him that refused to fall to the rocks in the scatteringmy mother’s scented oil in her hair,her burning fat seasoning in the skilletstinging my nostrils and eyes leaving me seeing smelling less than my faultering earshis ash…
-
Lullaby of Mother and New Born Child Abandoned in the Night
The Hudson sleepsand the clouds sweep over the moon. I promise little dearwith this small tear I will always love you.Sleep, sleep, sleeppeace, peace, peacethe promise I grant you. This song is the factthat your star remains intactin my heart, steady and true.The river’s lull,the moons’s full glowwill always pull us through.The path will be…
-
My mother use to say….
My mother use to say whenever I gave I her one of my poems to critique-my mother whose grace and beauty lingers like the reflection of sun on water-that my words remind her of the time in her youth when her life was honey.But I am not a bee and she was never a queen—…
-
Trying to Follow My Mother
This morning the ghost of my mother haunted me. There was just peace, calm, a blue-green shadowy crystal shimmering steady above my sleeping chair. She came at a time when only I can see and know her- before the last dream and dawn, before the others awakening, she pulsated lovely and in proper motion through…
-
Our Song of Sadness
Live long enough and your Father will serve you grief with oranges on a silver platter—Shed enough tears and your Motherwill appear, remorse in one hand,a pomegranate in the other—Bury a spouse, and salt will be your servant, once the beloved’s water leaves, and you’ve swallowed the last bitter herbs.Lose a child, and light will…
-
A Prayer for Beloved Mothers
Beloved, mother this day you will eat, in this body of trying, the bread of hope. Beloved, mother this day you will bathe, amidst this body of breaths, in the fragrance of rose water. Beloved, mother this day you will hear, inside this sounding body, the soft laughter of your children. Beloved, mother this night…
-
I Can Never Write Like My Mother
Am I left loving what my mother couldn’t? — writing on patchouli scented paper — words doused in sweet musky earth — unsent letters, all sweet and spicyI laid the stems of letters across wet pages—but they did not take— failed to bloom—I tired of the scent— wished for the beautiful unadorned line— divorcedfrom all…
-
Mother Are You Proud of Me?
They tore your body apart.You died among walls of infusion boxes.On the television, the Pope riding by in his Pope mobile.Are you proud of mewhen I cry?Are you proud of mewhen I don’t?Peeking through the slats of the living room blinds,I discovered your body slumped in the reclining chair.Will I ever know the truth of…
-
The Evolution of Our Caress
from the cotyledon the leaf opens it first curveto the golden decay, the dispersing crumbling wind.from the abandoned shellstanding firm against the reclaiming wave the turtle claims its carapace.from the snail’s screamthe ear cupped itselfto hear what the tide strived to muffle. from beyond the foam the mother and child cuddle from the wind, the…
-
What to Do with All the Love that Remains
The most beautiful thing is always the thing in front of you, my mother use to say. And she was a beauty, always smiling, a beauty markfollowing in front. To see such beauty was to die a little in the heart each day- Each day to give your heart away until there is noting left.Love…
-
An Endless Telephone Call
I knew this pulse had traveled thru spacewith a shivery speedto reach this felt sole,these five yards of ancient twisted wires that gave it sound-striking its bell three times in mournful bursts.it was too early to hear the good news of friends.Yet, even not quite awake,I knew between the sounds of hello and goodbye my…
-
Black Dress
When she wears the black dress against herself and sees her every reflection in the mirror she knows it will fit her better than even her mother ever wore it.
-
Nourishment
The buried placenta knows not the suffering of the womb,only that it once nourished.
-
Walking Along the Seashore Without My Mother
The old negative of her with her hair pinned backI hold up to the horizon and see it fade into the waves.It was the one taken through the filtered window of her black car,her face half in night and half in day.Behind, I hear the echo of the sand cave.In front, the roar of swirl…
-
Ode to a Peanut Butter Elvis
Elvis loved his peanut butter. Gladys, who loved him the most, as all good mothers love their children, would feed him grilled Hawaiian bread sandwich after sandwich of peanut butter with chopped caramelized bananas, or gently mashed fork bananas, sometimes with bacon, sometimes without. He dreamed of peanut butter and Gladys would feed…
-
My Mother’s Sounds
I am not your dying son, I thought, as my wife gave me the diagnosis, remembering my mom in her dying chair. I will not pass into final memories watching the Pope in America. “Bless me, Papa”, will not be my last words. I do not believe in my mother’s God though He…