| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
WASHING MY MOTHER Guy Kettelhack (GuyBlakeKett) WISHING WELL Melissa Resch (BostonArtist) CHEATED T. Obatala (trkyounger)
“Put on your robe. I’ll help you to the bathtub,
mom.” A calm like church as the assemblage
of her terryclothed fragility held onto you as
both of you walked slowly down the hall.
A bathseat waited, and you turned a gentle rush
of water on, and helped her slip out of her robe,
and surely as she’d commandeered your baby body
more than fifty years before, you helped her,
naked, lift her spindle legs above the porcelain,
and past the shower door, to settle on the stool,
willing that the water be the right degree of warm.
You swallowed your amazement at her girlish form.
You wonder at this moment – soaping, rinsing,
drying the frail dying woman who had lent you life –
overcoming everything that ought to have
forbidden it. You can’t imagine how you did it.
her lips are like a china doll’s, petite and red
his are like GI Joe’s, stiff and simple
everything they once said lies wrapped in pinky swears
pure as childhood sincerity
I wish I may, I wish I might
tonight the pair make footprints in the snow, their tracks
wider than a Cadillac, a threat to tell
their story in the morning if someone travels
this way, but it’s lost at dawn
as the thickest fog sets in
a shrouded silence, woven with palest air
hung over white froth from the sky
wafting subtle, smelly
hints of stale wallpaper and dirty laundry
pain tumbles down, invades, burns her eyes
she hums to hold a lump at bay
it rises in her throat till she cannot swallow
she always wants to know the truth
hates to knock on doors in vain
will not ask too hard
she doesn’t know what he’s saying
fools like me, she is thinking
all that jazz, she is thinking
what can I do but
wish you well
Is my name
a comfortable
music in the mouth?
The silence is immense.
The year has left me
swollen with bitterness.
Somewhere deep within me,
Somewhere in the gallery
of important things,
I have learned only
to taste sheer terror.
Whoever dreams of holding
his life into his fists
You love your life too much.
You have been cheated.
MORE ABOUT THE IBPC...
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Poems entered from About Poetry Forum, 2001
