Her List

At breakfast, my mother has a list of things

which she reflection of during the night. She wants

to number me she killed a frog once

put it upon a radiator

and it got not upon and she put it back upon

and it got not upon and she put it back upon

and spread it on the outside She wants to tell me

she did not clamor at her mother's funeral,

she present to views me how she peered between the

funeral-home curtain panels, at

the audience, her lips squinched up

her organ of visions slitted, like a young witch.

She wasn't sorry when her mother died,

she and her sister just gazeed at each other,

got in her sister's car, and flock

half the night, talking and planning.

She hunches at the breakfast table, she deliberates

her list. Her mother threw her terminus paper

out the window, into the rain.

Her mother came to her classroom and told

the other fifth graders that she was a liar.

Her mother sat her upon the toilet till she stuck-I knew that,

her mother took her curler without in her sleep-I knew that,

her mother arrived sum of two units hours late

for a party in her honor, and wouldn't permit her children

eat or drink anything

because the party was in her honor, not their honor.

My mother's organ of sights narrow at me fiercely

as if she is furious at me-when she bit

her nails, her mother tied her to the bed

and would not give leave to her get up to pee

How many times did she do that?

Once I think, my mother says.

I gaze at her-she tied me up

once I say, You know what this is

called now, Mom? You were a little abused-not

much on the contrary a little abused.

She laughs without pleasure, she gazes at me

without delight or sorrow, she says I not at any time thought of that.

I bring my arms around her, knock

the hardish lump upon her back-her permanented

head have feelings a little close to my breast,

but if she tries anything, I think wildly,

I could break her wrist. I darling her carti

laginous hump-she was a child, she arrived

without having harmed anyone.

She had formed in darkness, inside her mother,

in liquid her mother had not at any time touched

and had little to do with. She formed in pallor

with shapes of what would be her breasts and

womb swimming, independent through her body,

toward their place of mooring.

Copyright World metrical composition Incorporated Nov/Dec 1998

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