As usual, the italics are phrases I'm not sure about, the slashes are choices, one or the other.
Marking Mother
We walk beneath the hospital
in an endless corridor
lined with closed doors
and waiting patients,
a surreal dream.
Your frail form is so insubstantial
that when I hold your arm
I have to use all my weight
to keep you from floating away.
I tether you to me
as I was once to you.
There is a moment of silence
when the others,
solid and alive with hope,
suck in your spectral/ephemeral presence.
Then they return
to their hushed, nervous conversations.
Not here for levitation,
but radiation,
the doctor tattoos
your pale skin
with intricate hieroglyphics.
He ornaments your cheek and neck
like a magical incantation,
a comfort,
until he etches,
an X at the center of your forehead.
Son
Son
I pushed him head first into the light. He
squinted his eyes and moved forward, wore holes
in his overall knees, ran barefoot to the sandbox,
shoved through the weighty door of school.
He was a planet in orbit around me; I wanted
to shine on him like the sun. I sustained him
with whole milk, day camp, the World Book.
He grew so strong and fast I couldn't keep up.
He fueled his body with his own choices:
Pizza, beer, smoke. He wore baggy
jeans, his hair hung in dreads, girls' high
voices spiraled from his cell at two a.m.
One windy day, he spun away from me at light
speed, his childhood and my motherhood
crammed in his ragged backpack. Unfinished,
I meant to give him courage and spirituality.
Now he hurtles, directionless, away, away. As my
light dims I must trust he'll arrive in the shining
place he needs to be. If he travels far enough,
he'll see me, like a star, long after I'm gone.
Ruth,
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry I'm just now getting to these. I had to leave town for the weekend and I wasn't until I returned that I remembered your deadline.
Marking Mother: Again Ruth your skill with poetry is really highlighted here in lines like "the doctor tattoos
your pale skin
with intricate hieroglyphics"
What a powerful image that creates. The X on the forehead creates a powerful kind of dread that comes from the mixture of this very practical,scientific situation and the way you have filtered it through a type of ritual.
I am unsure why this is a comfort though, and I would like to see this feeling explained. Is it a comfort because it isn't harmful, because it is prolonging whatever comes next? If you can access that emotion through more action or sensory detail all the better. The floating away and the people looking a her spectral (I would personally go with spectral because it is fewer syllables and flows better when read out loud) form carry that emotion through imagery, and I'd like to see you stick to that instead of just saying it is a comfort. My only other confusion is in the first line. Are you in tunnels under the hospital? What is important about that? The poem doesn't really catch its emotional thread until "your frail form is so insubstantial." Maybe start the poem there, and then you will have some space to access that emotion at the end within your 20 lines. Again just suggestions to make an already beautiful poem really sizzle.
Son,
ReplyDeleteWow. I bet this one was hard to write. This cosmos imagery is a strong part of this poem, and I like how it extends this poem into time, even future time. You control the time in your poems so well, speeding up and slowing down very easily. There is definitely some emotional resonance here, but for a poem with such deep rooted conflict, it takes a long time until it is introduced. The first stanza includes common images of little boys, but contains no conflict. The sun and planet orbiting is trying to establish that cosmos imagery, but comes across as a little heavy handed. The second stanza is specific in its mention of World Book, but it isn't until the last line that we get our fist look into the root of the conflict: the son leaving and the mother staying behind. Then it really picks up and you deliver great one liners like "I meant to give him courage and spirituality" which shows elegantly both regret and how limited parents are in what they can give to their children. I wonder at the end of this how fractured this relationship is? Is there more going on than the usual longing for independence that makes the son leave? Why does he only take a pack? This really tackles a great relationship between a mother that wants to see her son healthy and well developed, and a son who rejects her best intended gifts. There is an undercurrent here of judgement that the sons choices aren't as good. This could come out. Maybe there is some dissapontment here? Also, is he really living in a cell? Would the narrator really call it that? Again, this is a brave and worthy poem, and these are just some thoughts. I find it is just as important to leave what feedback you don't find useful as it is to take what you do find useful.
Thank you for your comments, Anna. I think I'll submit the second poem, "Son," with a few changes, to the workshop. I want to save the first one and get it just right. I guess what I'm saying is I have more invested in the first one, it's been around longer, but I'm not ready to put it out there yet. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteAgain, thank you for your helpful criticism.
Ruth,
ReplyDeleteI think you know when your poems are done. I can tell that the first one has a good deal of emotional resonance. Sometimes its important to put something away for a while (not too long) and then come back to it to get some perspective.