Two Bumpy Mother-Sonnets, Mother-Sonnets 4 & 5

Napowrimo's challenge today: the golden shovel. Taking a poem, write your own, using each word of the original poem to end each line of yours. In other words, read down the last word of each line below to read the original poem (This Is Just to Say, William Carlos Williams's perfect little poem).  Two Bumpy Sonnets Mother-Sonnets #s 4 & 5 My Mother of Snuggles Always the plump ones, the chubby duet, you and I Food issues everywhere: why can't we have what they have? Sugar cubes, pineapple hearts, eagle eye on what's eaten Dreaming of lightness and flatness - the miracle - the But - the hunger - the wanting - the craving - not plums Not the sweet multicolors of fruit in a bowl - no, not that Not something you even could name, but there we were In a wide-open heaven of tastes, two fatties locked in. Where did it start for you, my mama? the Stylish, resentful mother you had? the icebox Of East Coast chic and taste who admonished and Watched you? And does it still matter, after all, which Childhood pattern, which lifetime of hurt, made you My cuddlesome, bounceable mama, who you were? Maybe It's Simpler Let's think this through again together. Probably If you had a meanie to mother you and my saving Grace was that I had you for a mother, for A pillow/pillar, a laugh/snuggle playmate, a breakfast Songstress for always, then maybe it isn't - forgive Me - at all about childhood or hurt. Forgive me But maybe it isn't about something missing. They come at us with theories but maybe we just were Chubby. Maybe life was full of delicious Things that we wanted. You wanted. I wanted, and so We said yes. But then rules. But then hankering! Sweet Things everywhere. Wanting the yummies and Wanting flat tummies and not getting either, so Torn and confused. No wonder we run hot and cold.

Mother-Sonnet # 3 / Charm # 3

One Last Magic Charm for You, Barbara

Mother-Sonnet # 3

A pocket with the tooth that made her cry

A dusting of the glamorous she was

A locket with the answer to your "why?"

A humming of your daddy's city buzz

The imprint of yourself the porch swing kept

Two phone calls from the neighbors in a box

A feather from the pillow where you slept

The trailing thread from all your bobby socks

A secret knowledge that you were adored

The screeching of the disappearing years

And then, all piled up in a secret hoard

Her wild and tidy hopes for you and fears

To catch you when you fall, and fall, and fall -

To make your childhood happy after all

Green scarf - Mother-sonnet #2

Last night the Bibliomancy Oracle gave me:

Funny how we hunker down in our little canoes 
in the middle of the scummy green swamp and wait and wait 
for hope to appear, for ghosts to die and come back as bodies.

*

from “The Lord God Returns” by Susan Wood

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I don't think that the first stanza here is quite working. It was fun to play with but I think I would have had to keep doing that kind of breaking or not even start with it. Not sure!

Mother Sonnet #2

It's funny how you permed your hair, and Ruth-

y saved the scarf. The dark green, torn and wrink-

led scarf we watched you wear throughout our youth.

The curlers underneath the green were pink.

We pass the scarf now back and forth by mail.

We did it even when you were around.

You downsized and the scarf just tipped the scale.

It's funny how the scarf wants to be found.

We wait. The scarf appears. And wait again.

A passing game for me and Ruthy now.

Who has it next? Where did it go? And then

It disappears in drawers till - blam, kapow!

The scarf comes back. And with it, just a scent

Of you again, the way you came and went. 

If this is April, it must be time to start poetry!

I want too much. I've been bottling it all up. I haven't been writing. For National Poetry Month (aka April) I wanted to write a poem a day, and I couldn't decide:

- thirty poems naming my thirty daughters?
- thirty Nyquil dreams?
- thirty poems coming at my mother from thirty different directions?
- thirty sonnets?
- thirty ghazals?
- thirty poems about me and God? or thirty poems 'bout me and my bod?

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Then there are my writing buddies and I'm excited about the prompts and ideas and poems that are going to be coming from them, and then there's the National Poetry Writing Month with a prompt a day at napowrimo.net.

So I just threw it all into the shaker and jumped in this morning. A little of everything (with a sonnet at the end if there's too much free-form in the middle):

Daughter #1, Sheherezade

Today this morning I am naming my first-born daughter Shahrzad, City-Born

My dark exotic young baby-nothing I am calling you Sheherezade, Teller of Countless Stories,

I am leaping from this corner through the whole house to the other corners

Gleeful with motherhood of you

Shouting and projecting all my lives, all my mother's lives, all lived and unlived days onto you while you,

With your tiny elbows, your nonexistent selfhood, are blocking and fending me off and saying

Here, mother, ignore those other corners and stop that foolish leaping and come be quiet with me

Here, mother, forget those other lives because no one knows if the oceans will rise and the coal will run out and all I will have is my own body with

Elbows. Cradle my dimpledness.

But I am not done projecting, hoping, thrilling that now I can finally lay down some of my own womanness because I will not be the last.

I can be anything because you can be anyone and I am not done shouting and leaping.

I can be anything because I don't have to be everything

Anymore.

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Nyquil #3

I called my sixteen-year-old son on the phone and got You on the line confusingly

speaking of curfews and places to be, how would he get home, You mentioned two buses

and I said yes, both thinking it made all the sense in the world and also knowing it didn't. I wanted to go into the city with my older son and my husband and make a big dinner and make a night of it so was glad if my younger son was staying the night with You and Your son, but who were You and why were You answering his phone, and how could I be so selfish.

I don't eat dinner, I don't like to stay up late, we don't live anywhere near a city and my younger son drives. And answers his own phone. I knew these things and wanted to say Wait, Wait,You!

I couldn't understand didn't listen couldn't hear what You were saying and I was embarrassed not to know who you were. By the time we hung up, which we never did, You were me on the other end of the phone.

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And two poems for napowrimo, who sent me to The Bibliomancy Oracle:

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The Bibliomancy Oracle gave me:

If you want to be touched, say, Touch me.


If you want to be held, say, Hold me.

* 

from “The Antelope As Document” by Yona Harvey

My Mother Used to Be Alive

I didn't have to ask, I just climbed into her lap, cuddled next to her shoulders, leaned against her leg.

I didn't have to ask, I just flew across the country and found her.

I didn't have to ask but I could have.

I didn't have to ask.

I didn't have to touch, we were always touching.

I didn't have to scream, she was always listening.

I didn't have to hold her, she was holding me already.

I didn't have to ask.

I didn't have to turn her into a goddess, she was always imperfect.

I didn't have to cut her down to size, she was uncatchable and uncuttable and always cutting herself down so many sizes anyway.

I didn't have to miss her, she was already missing. Or never.

I didn't have to.

I wanted to.

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The Bibliomancy Oracle gave me:

We all need jokers in the deck with us.

*

from “Mantras” by Charles Jensen

Mother Sonnet #1

You were my fifties Jersey housewife mom

Except it was the sixties, Congo—plus

You were demure and yet you were the bomb

We all need jokers on the bus with us.

You chased me till I screamed and then you laughed

You nursed me, taught me, tricked me, kissed my neck.

We danced till Daddy thought we'd all gone daft.

We all need jokers with us in the deck.

You taught us both, your daughters, how to deal

And how to shuffle, fluff the deck, and cut.

A missionary shouldn't cuss or steal

Or dance, play cards, or be a weirdo nut—

Except you were. You did. And so must I.

Let's all be jokers till we lose—or die.