Mother Is a House
Father is a stump grinder,?
a heavy planter. Shovel fingers?
bulling through onions and leeks.?
Truck-hands lashed to maroon suspenders.?
Head in the dirt, a blue exhaust?
trailing from grub-working teeth,?
hefting clumps and yellow ***-ends,?
raising clammy clay blooms.?
?
Mother is a house,?
most of it closed.?
Sometimes an upper window opens.?
net-curtains fly out of gray eyes.?
A girl-ghost locked in a bottle,?
?
She lifts me up on a dangle?
of faith to her bedroom.?
A mahogany night-dresser?
tucks away her dreams.?
She has closets, drawers?
where lovers doze.?
She whispers, less they all awaken.?
?
Outside, father crashes through turnips.?
Mother bleeds bitter-root?
from nub bitten fingernails.?
She pushes her child into rooms?
called 'buried-lost, buried-found'.?
The dead are everything –?
she copes not with the living.?
?
Later I listen to father grunt over her,?
as he spades a blinded moon?
between her broken fences.
Copyright © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2021
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