A madman crushed her favorite makeup
To paint my mother’s floor. Imagine rouge
On top of powders, scattered door to door.
“I’ll clean this up!” I say till she’s relieved,
Obedient enough to swallow her
Tart, medicated, Lotos-like ice cream.
She’s less combative, calmed by her morphine.
The mind’s embrasures, freed from pain’s embrace,
Will search for entertainment and escape
Confinement, longing to erase what’s real.
Mom’s traveling through Tinseltown and Rome
Of sixty years ago, a fond time when
Magnani commandeered “The Rose Tattoo.”
Perhaps to mother films were fancy cures.
An audience suspected everything,
Eventually, would turn out just fine.
My mopping scrolls sweet fictions she can screen
Through fantasy, delaying hideous
Mortality, the final credits roll,
When shovels dance and dust returns to dust.
Since Roxanol has brought its soft hammer
To bear on mother’s habit of rebuke,
We’re playing she’s an actress, which helps script
Our mock reality. We call this place
“A dressing room,” her home “a trailer” parked
Aside the set. She’s idle now because
It’s needed — her director will demand
That shot where she looks rested. It’s agreed
She’ll close her eyes while I beat grief from rugs.
Making a comeback, newly patient, she
Rehearses. It’s an unfamiliar role,
With gentle words expressed with self-control,
Extending herself to unseen marquees.
Detecting flickers of excitement keyed
By movie light, I hope there’s room for me.
. . .
This 35-line poem is from my WIP “Cancer Courts My Mother.
WILDsound Writing Festival 