we’re a cookie train
decked out in
conductors’ clothes:
Brownie and Daisy,
brown and blue,
multicolored patches
glistening in the sun,
red wagon behind
brimming with
a rainbow of boxes
tied with
red, yellow, green, purple
ribbons,
blue and white cards,
working our way
through the melting-snow streets
to bring a little happiness
on a Sunday afternoon.
daughters
One Night of the Year
we had uninvited guests
uninvite themselves back,
an impromptu invitation,
and our simple plans
of pot roast with
potatoes, parsnips, carrots,
mini-quiches and veggie pies,
tortilla chips and salsa,
butterscotch pudding cake
and French vanilla ice cream,
and kids as excited as
tree-swinging monkeys
for the one night of the year
that they can eat dinner
in front of the television.
it’s like a holiday
without the hullabaloo,
and our lack-of-sports
Sunday routine
can be broken
for this one night of the year.
Silver
with aching muscles
i nestle into the leather couch
surrounded by strangers,
our children
piling on top of
giant silver foam blocks,
forming friendships
as quickly
as the silvery flakes falling
outside the wall
of white-framed windows.
i watch the snow slither
into the city,
the silver titanium points
of this art museum
a perfect picture frame
of the silvery cityscape of skyscrapers
standing tall against the winter.
it is all warmth here,
all smiles,
and we could stay all afternoon
or forever in my memory.
Spell
her words escaped you
two years ago,
your never-sit-still antics
keeping your ears
from listening.
i read aloud now,
my attempt at
a Scottish accent
as pitiful as the pink umbrella
Hagrid uses to
pull out the pig’s tail,
and you sit, still as a stone,
asking for another chapter.
though the words
your Daddy and I have loved
for almost as long as
your Daddy and I have been
together
are just now
casting their spell on you,
i am grateful for
whatever words will lead you
into our love of literature.
Fancy
i don’t need a fancy gym or P-90x
i just rode thirty miles with the Vittetoe Express
my bike, tag-along, and a trailer daisy chain
may look to others just a little bit insane
but you’re popping out seven hundred a year
i spent eleven on coffee and cheer
when it’s sixty degrees in January
my legs and arms made a workout fairy
yes, it took six hours to visit the zoo
but i still made a deal better than you
i didn’t sacrifice one moment from my girls
and that beats all the muscles from your fancy curls.
January Daughters
Isabella
is it an act of defiance
once again, or a child
wanting to be a child,
dashing into the night,
rolling down the hill
until bits of dried grass
stick in your Brownie vest
like petulant pieces of glue,
causing me to shake your shoulders,
my flustered fingers unable to remove
from your almost-eight tangles
the frustration your actions bring?
or is it me, your end-of-day tired mother,
unable to remember those hills
i rolled down as a child,
petulant pieces of green grass
imprinting triangular shapes on my skin,
as i hand over your punishment
on display for your peers to mock,
only to later see the stack of cards
on my nightstand, the supplicant sticky,
“these are the thank-you cards i rote,”
your grammatically correct misspelling
tugging at the mother, the daughter,
we were both meant to be?
Mythili
with two top teeth missing,
you blend into the crowd
of second grade girls
for a weekend of camp.
you are the youngest
of twenty, demurely asking
for help with your pajamas,
with the needle you can’t quite thread,
but singing along with the songs,
joining in on the games,
snowshoeing into the woods
as if your teeth had already sprouted,
as if you had already skipped
over kinder and first grade,
my little one wanting
to be all grown up.
Riona
from the moment of birth
after twenty-four hours
of fighting to emerge,
when you made less than two peeps
and settled in next to my skin
for a peaceful night of nursing,
to the quiet child who follows
Daddy to a job and speaks not a word,
who cuddles silently on the couch
with a fever that you’ll tell no one about,
i truly believe,
my youngest, angelic child,
that you were born
without a single complaint in your soul.
Exchange
you have laid out the puzzles,
fixed the hot chocolate
in small pink cups placed before them,
popped the popcorn in the pan,
taken their small hands to form meatballs,
and set the table with
expensive wine, fine china,
everything that is beautiful and perfect.
we exchange the pieces of our lives
that mothers, daughters, friends, exchange,
handing them over as casually
as the French rolls you bought from the store
(dry, non-absorbent, bland as dirt).
i share my opinions as openly
as i know how, my heart set out
for you, mother, to remedy.
no amount of wine imported
from the Rhone River in France
will drown out the renewed realization
that the things i care for most,
the building blocks of my soul,
are blinded by the vision you have
of who you think i should be.
i exchange my words for silence,
then small talk that will lead nowhere.
it is safer for me to be that image
of yourself (the very part of you
that i despise, refuse to emulate)
than to cast away my weekend
with your distorted mirror view.
Becoming Women
we are girls becoming women
and women reliving girlhood.
all it takes
when times get rough
is a dodging-traffic drive
a sled down the mountain
endless screaming and dancing
a squished spider’s funeral
meals for twenty-eight
movies all night
and
the elixir of life
breathing wintry air on our skin,
popping out our souls
on the goosebumped flesh.
we are girls
girls
girls
becoming women.
Inheritance
it is true what i say:
i have no idea who you are
or why he married you
or why it is that
you put your hands on her
whose sting
carried over
into the shadows of my childhood.
i know i wouldn’t be here
spitting out these vicious words
if it weren’t for
your egg, his seed.
and i am thankful for that.
but your countenance?
your picture in my memory?
it is nothing more than
a vague recollection,
a fuzzy image,
rough around the edges,
someone who couldn’t remember my name
nor cared to ever learn it.
when you go,
tears will be shed,
but not mine, nor my mother’s.
we all know this is true.
you have lived your life,
given purpose to what we want:
to be better mothers,
to stretch our love
into those shadowy places
where your hands couldn’t reach.
What They’ll Remember
what they’ll remember
is this fire that
shuts out the frigid winter
with a crackle and zip,
a whip to the wind;
this shuffling of places
on the couch,
bottoms in laps,
blankets bundled in
heaps of warmth;
this mother with arms
wrapping love around them
as they switch places
and fight for their turn;
this father playing monster
from the floor,
his whiskery face
lit up amongst the flames;
this quiet game that
lets all the talks out
and erupts in unsuppressible
jubilant giggles.
what they’ll remember
is nothing else from
this day,
this night,
this part of their lives,
nothing but
love and warmth and happiness.
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