137 Mother poems

My mother saw the green tree toad on the window sill her first one since she was young. We saw it breathe and swell up round. My youth is no sure sign I’ll find this kind of thing tho it does sing. Let’s take it in I said so grandmother can see but she could not it changed to brown and town changed us, too.

because she needed a lavish taste on her tongue, a daily tipple of amber and gold to waft her into the sky, a soluble heat trickling down her throat. Who could blame her for starting out each morning with a swig of something furious in her belly, for days when she dressed in flashy lamé leggings like a starlet, for wriggling and dancing a little madly, her crazy reels and her rumbas, for coming home wobbly with a flicker of clover’s inflorescence still clinging to her clothes, enough to light the darkness of a pitch-black hive.

Every spring my mother says I should buy a straw hat so I won't overheat in summer. I always agree but the valley's soon cold, and besides my old Borsalino is nearly rain-proof. She's at it again, it's August, the grapes are sugaring. I say,Okay, and pluck a little spider from her hair— hair so fine it can't hold even one of her grandmother's tortoise shell combs.

My mother would be a falconress, And I, her gay falcon treading her wrist, would fly to bring back from the blue of the sky to her, bleeding, a prize, where I dream in my little hood with many bells jangling when I'd turn my head. My mother would be a falconress, and she sends me as far as her will goes. She lets me ride to the end of her curb where I fall back in anguish. I dread that she will cast me away, for I fall, I mis-take, I fail in her mission. She would bring down the little birds. And I would bring down the little birds. When will she let me bring down the little birds, pierced from their flight with their necks broken, their heads like flowers limp from the stem? I tread my mother's wrist and would draw blood. Behind the little hood my eyes are hooded. I have gone back into my hooded silence, talking to myself and dropping off to sleep. For she has muffled my dreams in the hood she has made me, sewn round with bells, jangling when I move. She rides with her little falcon upon her wrist. She uses a barb that brings me to cower. She sends me abroad to try my wings and I come back to her. I would bring down the little birds to her I may not tear into, I must bring back perfectly. I tear at her wrist with my beak to draw blood, and her eye holds me, anguisht, terrifying. She draws a limit to my flight. Never beyond my sight, she says. She trains me to fetch and to limit myself in fetching. She rewards me with meat for my dinner. But I must never eat what she sends me to bring her. Yet it would have been beautiful, if she would have carried me, always, in a little hood with the bells ringing, at her wrist, and her riding to the great falcon hunt, and me flying up to the curb of my heart from her heart to bring down the skylark from the blue to her feet, straining, and then released for the flight. My mother would be a falconress, and I her gerfalcon raised at her will, from her wrist sent flying, as if I were her own pride, as if her pride knew no limits, as if her mind sought in me flight beyond the horizon. Ah, but high, high in the air I flew. And far, far beyond the curb of her will, were the blue hills where the falcons nest. And then I saw west to the dying sun-- it seemd my human soul went down in flames. I tore at her wrist, at the hold she had for me, until the blood ran hot and I heard her cry out, far, far beyond the curb of her will to horizons of stars beyond the ringing hills of the world where the falcons nest I saw, and I tore at her wrist with my savage beak. I flew, as if sight flew from the anguish in her eye beyond her sight, sent from my striking loose, from the cruel strike at her wrist, striking out from the blood to be free of her. My mother would be a falconress, and even now, years after this, when the wounds I left her had surely heald, and the woman is dead, her fierce eyes closed, and if her heart were broken, it is stilld I would be a falcon and go free. I tread her wrist and wear the hood, talking to myself, and would draw blood.

HE has no gift for friendship, for he is void of all curiosity. Or rather, He’s only interested in matters touching the Lord Hamlet himself. He was born in a lab whose walls were lined with giant, steamy jars Of the milk of the various mammals, from the milk of camels to the milk of men. Pig milk, monkey milk, rat milk. Dog and cat milk, and the milk of whales. The milk of the duck-billed platypus and that | of the platitudinous buck. The thick red milk of the vampire bat. And the black milk of the black bear. —A backlit wall of bottles, ranged from commonplace to rare!— There was stallion milk and rooster, anaconda milk and shark; There was tarantula milk, Venus flytrap, and that | of the barking aardvark lark. And he would have been perfectly normal, would have grown up socially adroit, But he stripped the sheet off a drinking straw, took a blade, and shaped a point;— And he syringed into his body a few drops from every jar, Fell in the floor and spoke languages he had never heard before. He spoke Titmouse. He spoke Miaow. He spoke Moo and Gnu and Ha. He spoke three kinds of Chickenhawk and the thirty dialects of Baa. And from that day to this, MARDUD’s been lost in the zoo: A cautionary tale for whoever knows how to read the clues.

After “She was the song of my dark hour,” a photograph by Paul Tañedo I woke up and I was old— It’s hard to judge if this new country was worth its costs— Fil and Eileen educated themselves— They blessed me with their happiness— Roy and Glen lost themselves to a car accident and something worse (that I will not reveal even for a poem)— When I see myself reflected in a mirror I turn away to hide both my eyes, all of my self— when half of your children are destroyed the half who flourish cannot compensate exactly as if a heart breaks exactly down the middle.

The slice I ate I want it back Those crumbs I swept up I’d like my share again I can still taste it like it was The memory by itself is delicious Each bite was a small miracle Both nourishing and sweet I wish I had saved just a little bit I know it wasn’t a literal cake It’s the thought that counts Like a gift that’s not store-bought Making it even more special Like a dream that makes you Want to go back to sleep You can’t have your cake And eat it too Momma said I was defiant and hardheaded And answered yes I can too The look she gave me said boy I hope you aren’t a fool all your life

Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the elements. Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue. In a drafty museum, your nakedness Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls. I’m no more your mother Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow Effacement at the wind’s hand. All night your moth-breath Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen: A far sea moves in my ear. One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral In my Victorian nightgown. Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try Your handful of notes; The clear vowels rise like balloons.

Jesse Patrick Ferguson is a Canadian visual poet working in both visual and textual forms. His "Mama" shows how little text it takes to make a successful visual poem. Consisting of nothing but the letter "e," variously presented, this poem represents the simple warbling cry of a child. The poem is both a touching visualization of an aural event and a strong example of how xerographic transmogrification can add character and meaning to text.—Geof Huth More About Visual Poetry >>

for Michel Tournier, The Four Wise Men At least once a month a man boards a bus bound for Detroit, one bag, a few books. Nevertheless he always tells himself I just might leave Cincinnati for good just cut out never look back... When he arrives in the Motor City he drinks and drinks it all in until he’s dead drunk on all fours, a two-year-old mama’s boy, bawling all night night after night for the salt-sweet milk of his sister-mother turning in her sleep from a hard back turning toward the Canadian border... When at long last he takes a bus back to the Queen City, long after the only rest stop, he notices the first signs: merciless thirst, gorging hunger, swollen ankles, what the folks down south call sugar.