Poetry
My mother wasn’t a bakerin the ordinary sense. Nothree-tiered cakes with strawberriesmarching the frosty perimeters.No éclairs sliding from the ovenfor treats on Sundays. Sure,
In a room near Triceratops, not far from the elephant skulland the wave machine we come upon a glass casewith shelves of women’s shoes. My daughter and I peer in
Make it specific.Make it Oregon, Wisconsin. The time doesn’t matter.
I.It is 76 degrees with no chance of snow for decades.Some people don’t know what its like to live October through Marchwithout blue sky.
We trudge through last year’s corn stubble in a wayward, straggling line,drunken with the hour and the cold. It’s April, 4 AM, the air metallic in our noses.We stoop low, clamber awkwardly into plywood boxes slouching in slush,
Driving my flatbedover Nebraska back roadswhere marsh land opens uplike an ironed seam.Driving to Merton’s fishing holebeyond the aster and bottle-brushwhere we once spent afternoonsreeling in trout.
Some people have been leaving too soon.
Their library books still due,the gas and electric bill waitingin the bills to pay slot.
Where the author’s formulations challenge the reader’s credulity, I have quoted the German original in the notes. Seeing is believing. —Ralph Manheim, translator Mein Kampf
Mothers make excuses, hardly doe-eyed but entirely well-meaning.Their daughters aren’t wayward. Simply, they misplace their sensesof direction or heighten their prospects of efficiency.
When I got to her earthen room,I thought, Oh God, no. Not this one.
Too young, too fragile, for this word-made-flesh deal you’ve got brewing.
- ‹ previous
- 11 of 21
- next ›
Wisconsin Academy Offices
1922 University Avenue
Madison, Wisconsin 53726
Phone: 608.733.6633
James Watrous Gallery
3rd Floor, Overture Center for the Arts
201 State Street
Madison, WI 53703
Phone: 608.733.6633 x25