Knight

 

 

 

My mother always mentions her age

in reference to things

she refuses to discuss.

Mention gay marriage

and she willl undoubtedly default to

"you know i'm 83 years old"?

Or the Arab Spring

and she will launch into

the subtleties of the culture in

33 when, as she recalls,

there were no Arabs outside

the bible, just a hot wind

blowing thru Georgia summers

and all watermelons had seeds

the size of mules eyes.

 

She drifts into a habit of going to

soft efficient places but ambiguous

except for her son who writes,

what he calls poems, on table napkins

or on the back of AARP magazines

that come so often, they stack up

like obituaries on her night stand.

Can rattle off, in order, the names

of her high school girlfriends

who've gone on to glory. "You need

throw the old ones out Mom,

the ones from last year at least".

And she will draw her hand up

to her ear, as if she cant hear you,

 

as if Etheridge Knight had

crawled into her while she slept,

to acknowledge, among other things,

a fierce, fierce loneliness.

Reviews

[Marie Anzalone]

With some people of a certain generation, I think the walls are not fortresses; they are actually layers of an onion. We peel back and peel back and we shed real tears trying to understand and the layers they have wrapped themselves in keep shedding but there is always more work to get tothe core, the heart of the thing. I wonder if we even spoke of "loneliness" to these folks, would they recognize the word, or would they roll it too on a tongue, after morning coffee, amd declare it "foreign" and therefore untrustworthy as a real thing? How do we wrap ourselves, or have we learned as poets to unwrap, so that we do not develop nacre around our sand grains? or is the writing itself the nacre, onion-like in form but rock in its permanence? What of those who come after us? What wil their own defenses be? An inability to sustain eye contact, maybe? So many questions this brings up; I think of my own mother's stiff, guarded form... the one time she told me that she loved me and it sounded like a foreign expression to us both. I thiknknI love where this piece is leadign my thoughts and feelings, my dear friend.

[Rita L. Sev]

This poem brings a flood of recollections, my grandmother using her age as a reason for her beliefs and decisions... my own mother, now, allowing age to hold her back a bit... This is a beautiful piece that brings past and present, simple and profound together.

[Horizon K.]

Diego faved this-- an extreme rarity, and honor-- so of course that caught my eye, and I agree. This is perhaps my favorite poem ever of yours, a beautiful tribute to not only a mother, but about a son who notices these details of how she acts to acknowledge -- yet avoid.

There are poems about all sorts of things, but it is ones like these that reveal such beauty of humanity-- that show one person looking at -- into another-- seeing where the loneliness, the sadness, hides itself, where the lines of communication are drawn and walls are built within the heart-- If we can see these places within another, acknowledge them... perhaps neither of us are quite so lonely, after all...

gorgeous, dana....

[writing mojo]

The autobiographical of commune, it's your gift dana and you wrap it always so nice, folded corners, adhesive ideas, all come together with one hanging strand you loan to us the readers with the wisp of controlled wrist..it's the posture of your write with some 200 bones, the connective fascia of being born from the synaptic smirk plugged into the transistor radio and the silhouette of living with ghost to rebirth from static longed ..amazing piece dana

Your words dana, value, for you know how to make conversation, and that's truly important. I will remember this piece, forever, until my mother get's that age. And have your words in my memory friend.
They will echo, as I recognize such a life-situation easily. So I'm grateful you shared this with us dana.

- Elisa

[W.k.kortas]

I think the wise Diego has covered much of the ground here, and done so in virtuoso fashion his own self, examining how those of us of a certain age whose parents have reached their old age perhaps both hearken back to what seemed a simpler time, though Knight and George Jackson and on and on and on (for that matter, our parents as well) certainly would not have thought so at the time. As always, your ability to seamlessly tie together the intimate and the universal is simply a matter of wonder, a matter of magic.

[Tree]

Ok d, ok. You've written by your own admission thousands of poems, and we've only read a fraction of them, many of them extraordinary. But here I can say that this one touches my heart in a place no other has, and I had to really think about that. Because so many of your pieces have affected me. I think there is something about our mothers when they grow old, how they become holy almost sacred flesh and bronze entities, or composed of porcelain, a figurine, ballerina in a hand-carved box. It's a deep deep reverent sadness but a joy all at the same time. I'm thinking of all that old precious art at a museum, where the velvet rope and guard (we sons and daughters) monitor the comings and goings, allowing people to admire but not letting them get too close as they might damage something, knock something out of place. I like how the speaker reflects himself off to the distance, a loving patient presence not willing to disturb his mother's inner sanctity, her inner peace. "You need throw the old ones out Mom,/ the ones from last year at least." Here you just connected with every son and daughter across the globe, my own mother, God bless her soul, she saves everything junk mail included, then can't find her light bill.



Outstanding piece, d.
And don't think for a moment that E. Knight
fierce analogy was lost on me; deft.
Flag this.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

this poem reminds me of long talks i have now with my dad...what he remembers from so far back, although in current life, he can't remember what he asked five minutes ago...
and both he and my mom, still alive in their 90's, the old guard, the way life was for them, though it is different now, they still see it the same way they did when they were kids in the 20's...

such a thoughtful piece, so many of us can relate to this...having parents of that generation.