By the Pound
This poem is so starved it doesn’t know where to begin,
so it opens with my mother’s rubber “fuck cancer” bracelet
too baggy on a narrow wrist tattooed with
her own mother’s name, but my favorite details
are captured in a photo, as if a photo can capture
and hold anything indefinitely. She took up
tap dancing again, reborn with jazz hands,
wearing a hot pink t-shirt. How often has her smile
reached her eyes like that? Anyway, Florida spits
its birds of paradise from the dirt and gators wend
through estuaries bisecting retirement communities.
Carnivorous flowers work in the same way—
attracting prey with turgid purples and nectar that cloys
with decay. I remember how she hissed they’re killing me
before she even knew. Hurricane Irma stripped her house
of its porches, its skirting, its laundry shed, so her husband
had no place to take his spoon and lighter. Her other daughter
reminds me of the way tropical mosquitos steal in small doses
and offer fever in return. Every itchy welt a reminder of theft.
I’m trying to learn the link between weight we take on
and what we lose. I look up cortisol, cancer, stress link.
It was like her blood went bad. Florida Woman
Drained to Death by Her Own Family. When she grew frail
she rejoiced in the exposure of clavicles that broke
when she fell. I remember how her mother—the Rose etched
on her wrist—ate laxatives or hid her body in snap-up
housedresses. Like the value of a life can be tallied by
the plusses and minuses of a bathroom scale dusted
with a thin layer of talcum. I would beg my mother
eat please eat, but her lips would thin into a grim smile.
She’d reply I’ll eat when I’m hungry,
and then she wasted away.
Nautilus
My mother’s two hands,
her manicured nails resting
neatly against the bed,
wrapped around rags rolled
tightly, grasping golden ratios.
If I could only alight on details
I wouldn’t need to see the whole
scene. If I could only unscroll
the two cloths to reveal
the divine at their center,
I might make sense of this
empty shell. Before I can
unravel how she could be
holding a galaxy in each hand,
all my questions answered,
a nurse switches off the vent,
drapes a white sheet, and wheels
my mother from the room.
Stages of Grief
The rain porch is finished after
extensive repairs and new paint—
brocade chaise moved in and the new chair
paired with paisley ottoman plucked
from the neighbor’s trash. We settle in
to witness the changing nature of storms:
slanting rain with low rumble, no heavy
drops but thunder like a shotgun blast.
Thunder that travels the sky like bass
slipping from speaker to speaker. Trees
shuddering or raving or leaves still
like they’re just listening. A slate sheet
of monsoon pocked white with hail
and then a long gentle pour after
the histrionics. Experts say to expect
a cool, wet summer.
