In an untitled folder
Right on the desktop
I found my mother’s poetry
There was a hesitation
In choosing
To read it
My mother spent her life
Arranging photographs
On a mantle
That was never dusted
She held sentiment
For torn t-shirts
Broken VCR’s
Dented cans of crinkle-cut carrots
Ingredients for a peach cobbler
She’d never make
Everything meant something
Except for those closest to her
We were unable
To carry meaning
Because we wouldn’t
Stop moving
Despite our best efforts
We could not empty ourselves out
Sufficiently
And so placing things
Within us
Was too complex a process
My mother saw me
And wished that I could hold
All the anger
She had left over
From a childhood spent
Being asked to solve
Her father’s absence
As angry as I got
It was never enough
To remove the quantities
That poisoned her
I was not her child
I was broken dialysis
I was her missing veins
I was her stale sugar cookies
Clicking on her first poem
I was struck
By how much
She let out
If I ever suspected her
Of being creative
I assumed it would be
In a visual sort of way
Paintings hidden in the garage
With red and black blotches on them
Religious undertones
Or simple villages
That spoke to a dream she had once
And couldn’t shake
Instead here were these poems
These long poems
These epics
No word or description spared
More said in one piece
Than she’d spoken to me
In the last year of her life
That might be
Why dialysis
Is on my mind
That might be
Why suddenly
I think in poetry
I am no creative myself
But my first husband
Encouraged me to write
And so I wrote
And as I wrote
I wrote myself dry
And never filled up again
As therapy, it was helpful
But it didn’t bring about
A sense that I had any
Artistic contributions
To deliver
I was not surprised
That my mother
Hid her poetry
But I was surprised
At how much of it there was
Over a hundred poems
In that one little folder
Locked away in a computer
We used to play solitaire on
As children
The computer my father
Sat quietly at night-after-night
Having an affair with a woman
He would eventually leave my mother for
Only to travel to France
And find out that it was all a scam
He came back
On a Tuesday
My mother made him pot roast
And we all ate together
As though nothing had happened
Even though my mother was now
A woman marked by her distrust
Of any man
Who would claim to love her
I searched through the work
For any disclosures
About what she was feeling
At that time
The poems began
Around the time
My father brought
The desktop home
From a surprise trip
To CompUSA
I don’t remember
My mother ever using
The computer
But the timestamps
Are from either late at night
When we were all asleep
Or early in the morning
Before getting us ready
To go to school
The times are more illuminating
Than the words
Because the words
Detail the same thing
Over and over
A story of a girl
Going to a lake
To look for a boy
The boy never arrives
Or he does
But he’s different
He’s changed, somehow
And the girl asks him
Why, why has he changed?
In some poems
He explains to her
That’s he grown
That it’s aging
It’s natural
That she’ll change as well
In some of her poems
He stands there, silent
Refusing to give her
The answers she craves
She beats on his chest
Begging him to explain
How he could show up
In this way
Like a stranger
Like a statue
She’d never noticed
Erected on the shores
Of a lake
The poems where
He doesn’t show up at all
Are not the shortest
Quite the opposite in fact
Her protagonist waits and waits
And so the poems go on
And in them
She, the girl, or my mother--
Who knows?
Who can say
Where author ends
And character begins?
In those poems
The girl traverses
Her history with the boy
With the lake
All the things
That look like water
The behavior of the surface
The tension after the ripples
The displacement as she places her hand
Down a few inches
And a few inches more
Why would my mother
Go on and on
About a lake
That only exists
In her mind?
Why wouldn’t she
Write about something
That means something
To her?
She didn’t grow up near a lake
There is no biography here
No clues to a past
No detective work
To be done
Why spend so much time
Living in repetition?
Staying up so late
Getting up so early
Just to write the same poem
Unless there was
A parable there somewhere?
What am I meant
To learn
From something
I was never meant
To read?
The invasion
Of a dead woman’s
Privacy
Does not disturb
My surface
It’s the futility
Of the invasion
That rankles me
When I was thirteen
I came home from school
And my mother
Was sitting on the edge
Of my bed
My open diary
In her lap
‘So,’ she said, almost pleased,
‘This is where you keep it all’
Did she mean the anger?
Did she mean the anger I felt towards her?
Did she mean all the things
I never said
Sitting at the dinner table
Chewing on pot roast
That tasted like submission
Not just to a man
Or to forgiveness
But to what life demands?
My mother and I were
Adjacent countries
Where any alliance
Is only one misstep
Away from being a war
Proximity precludes
Any real sense of peace
I spent a week
Reading each of her poems
Re-reading a handful
Dissecting one or two
The one that I nearly memorized
Featured the girl at the lake
Never mentioned the boy
If you hadn’t read
The other poems
You wouldn’t know
There even was a boy
But you know she’s waiting
She talks about not
Knowing how to swim
As she steps into the lake
She doesn’t say she’s sad
She doesn’t think of heartbreak
She describes the velocity
Of a Sunday
The way it comes up
From within you
And sits in your chest
Not how a Tuesday would do it
Tuesdays sit on your shoulder
However heavy
They might be
They do not weigh you down
In the poem
The girl walks
Into the lake
Right up to her waist
And then the words end
They stop mid-line
And this enrages me
Because what am I to
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17 comments
Poetry is something I don't normally read, but this makes me want to find more of it. Thanks for sharing!
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Thank you so much!
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I really like this. I like the flow, the little details, the Tuesday. The way the character is slowly getting to know something about their mother but they don't know exactly what. I love the clever ending. I wrote something similar (sort of, but not) for this prompt and thought I had an original idea, but yours is so much more creative. I really hope yours does well in the contest.
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Thank you so much, Katharine. It's not listed under recommended stories, so I don't think I have a shot, but I appreciate you reading it :)
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Hi, that's the second time someone has mentioned recommended stories but I can't find them anywhere! Could you please drop me a link to where this page sits? Thanks!
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There's no one singular page (that I know of), but if you check any category, the recommended stories are listed at the top.
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I'm not much of a poetry person, though I've been working at it hard this year - so I'm not the best qualified for critiquing. Nevertheless, turning in a narrative poem like this within a week is impressive! And there's lots to like here. “He came back / On a Tuesday” - I like this whole section. A couple lines paints the whole marriage, and presents a situation that's both absurd and believable. “A story of a girl / Going to a lake / To look for a boy” - such a peculiar body of poetry is indeed a neat mystery. “Were any alliance / Is ...
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Thank you, Michal. I can see how the "were" part was confusing. I simplified it a bit to make it clearer. Thank you so much for the close reading and I hope you keep leaning into poetry. It's been very rewarding for me.
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Wow I enjoyed this a lot! It’s so different than I anything I have read here and that caught me by surprise. Impressive :)
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Thank you so much, Hannah. Glad you enjoyed it.
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After reading this powerful and very creative tale, well, I feel like perhaps I shouldn't submit to this week's contest anymore. Hahahaha ! Kidding. This is a sure winner here. Everything was impeccable -- the creative form, the rich imagery, the way you described the emotions. Brilliant. "Chewing on pot roast that tasted of submission" - What a line !
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Thanks so much, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
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This was so beautiful! Well done! Really liked this, so powerful: "He came back On a Tuesday My mother made him pot roast And we all ate together As though nothing had happened"
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Thank you so much, Melissa!
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Unique writing approach -- I love when a free flowing prose is employed with no rules or parameters, and it fits the narrative well. Enjoyed reading!!
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Thank you so much, Christy!
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The secrets that we keep...
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