suet.

just this morning

a deaf child heard the voice of it's mother for the first time.

Oh me?

I sat up late following

flying saucers until the one

marooned

and we caught eyes

(me and the insane one).

Following me to the basement,

the one that flooded in August, where

I showed him how high the water rose;

a line etched on wood colored drywall

in t**d and salt.

The soaked thru ottoman I wanted to save.

Told him that mothers float like a cork

in the bituminous black Atlantic.

And all he could ask me

was what a mother was.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

sometimes we hear even when we don't and sometimes we simply hear what others don't....
we write of it...love the "bituminous black Atlantic"
this poem is like Mulder in "X Files" meets Gwendolyn Brooks...

those poems about mothers, and how we so often feel alien, like strangers in a strange land.

[Cory Barrett]

Dana, I love reading what you write. I find it profound, and a stir stick for my soul.

But, the line in t**d and salt made laugh really f*****g loud. Thank you.

I have had a basement flood. There was a really hot stripper that lived in the second floor apartment of our house. The basement was the laundry area in said home. Imagine stripped lingerie... And now imagine a pile of it consumed by feces. Epic.

[Kurl Urban]

"Just this morning a deaf child heard the voice of it's mother" with an opening line like that I am already hooked, gone, yours until the final full stop and even then I am disappointed, could we have not hit mars, or someplace far just to have you say something.

[W.k.kortas]

The turn from the YouTube worthy million-view moment in the opening lines to the stark uncomprehension (which I suspect is mutual) of the final lines is subtle until you actually make the comparison and realize how much of an about face it is. As the wise Delmar notes, it is, as the mother-son relationship is about as elemental as it gets, the whole deal.

[writing mojo]

Reminds me as a child, I'd blink really fast hoping for slow motion, or squint my eyes so they were just slits and swear I saw molecules.. So much is broken down in these kind of elemental senses, these states in third I's that write more on paddled walls of the 4th ward, or are given shock to Hieroglyphic spouts, than Columbus discovered through bouts of gout and chlamydia... Sometimes, I think in these receding archetypes, heat lightening these brained days with dreams carbon dating, clairvoyant with the shuffle of the poker cards defaced..in Grandpa's dead hand....His plaid blue place matted table cloth was our Tupperware covered future.. no Rogaine, no Viagra in his body as his toupee becomes discombobulated, from the industrial sized open windows.. retrograding Buddha's smooth pate at the right angle..excellent piece

[Delmar Cooper]

That put the deal into perspective,didn't it?