A brittle face,
Snowy eyes
Communicate carefully the
Minute details of the storm inside.
In the hall the elevator doors part,
And my tears gush out,
A salted homage to King.
My surface life is disturbed,
Alabaster marred by freckles and nodules and
Wednesdays.
My outer life is placid, perceivable, unpersonalized.
But inside this domestic box,
Lay the most anemic dreams,
Copulating,
Breeding hopeful runts.
A blue tunnel rimmed with rainbow spangled stars
Leads to a woman in a black field harvesting high heels.
She is old as winter,
Her hair violet,
Her eyes ultramarine stars flashing.
She is no one’s neighbor,
Born beneath a pile of cast stones.
Somewhere in the looming black wheat
Beneath the onyx ether
Girl children are born in red satin receiving blankets.
A nuclear image of a girl constructed from trees
Blows apart a novel, a life, clairvoyant cinematography.
She sips from a waterfall,
Collects scraps of rain in her hair.
She rebels against rebels from every state of matter that matters
(Doesn’t all matter matter? A speck of glitter can cleave an eye).
With her breath fleeing north and her pheromones slipping south,
Nothing will ever be hot again.
Fireworks of pain in my fecund teeth
Advantageous chalkboards fill with unmoored drawings
In kid script
Of dragons and lagoons and devils.
Open red. See the wet birds waddle out cheep cheep.
Alarming threads sew me a bag for my head
In this titillating twilight.
Once I was 21 and I buried myself by a birch tree.
Then instantly I was 23 and I was born,
Having gestated under a plaid lamp.
I can barely bite but oh how I am bitten!
Hurt a cataclysmic light in my eyes.
I have been haunted by the voice of Autumn
taken the wind for a weekend lover,
argued with the reeking river.
I live in a castle of mattresses
and I take it sweet and slow getting out in the morning.
Bacon fries itself in the kitchen,
doing such fantastic somersaults in the bombastic grease.
A congress of confetti has decreed
every wind must blow up.
The ground breathes.
I look like Marilyn Monroe as a housewife,
standing in my yard with my dress billowing around me.
My husband sees me with his eyes shut.
Hands open.
The hours I have given him clump between his fingers like cat litter
I will wash them with aloe.
I will dry them in silence.
Our daughter has been sequestered with the sequins
and she has sewn a shining dress.
See her straddle the breeze.
She learns from me.
I want my life to be an example of creativity and beauty to my daughter. Being a mother has completed me in some inexplicable way. It is as though I was born her mother, and Angelica’s birth was just a stage in my life cycle. When she was born it was as if I was a butterfly emerging winged from a snow white cocoon.
Because she completes me, and she widens my world, she has deepened my poetry. Motherhood has also been good for my productivity. It gives me less time to write. That may seem counterintuitive, but it is true. By allowing me less time to write, motherhood makes me focus when I do have time to write. Sometimes having all the time in the world just makes one fritter away time. When you become a mother, you appreciate time. That said, I still need my husband’s support for my writing. He lets me have a wonderful babysitter twice a week and gives me time to myself in the evening to read and write. Reading is the life blood of writing. A mother without any support and many children may find creating great literature next to impossible. Woolf was right when she said a woman needs money and a room of her own to write. But given critical aid, motherhood can enhance poetry.
Motherhood:
-Reinvigorates me and gets my creative juices flowing
-Enriches my life and gives me more to write about.
-Makes me make the most of my time. I am super productive because I know how limited my time is.
Before I met my husband I intended to go to an MFA program before starting a family. I thought two to three years with nothing to worry about but writing would be ideal. Now that life has taken me down a different path, I see that for me nothing is further from the truth. Motherhood and the awesome responsibility it entails gives me a purpose, something everyone who wants to write should have. If your whole existence is writing, you may find you have nothing to write about. See the proliferation of novels and short fiction about writers/MFA students by writers/ MFA students.
This is not to denigrate MFA programs, which can be wonderful. I am simply saying that motherhood has in many ways been a rigorous training ground for my poetry, and that the breadth of experience it provides me is nutritional for my fertile mind.
Little yellow cottage on the brink of forever,
Brimming with solar powered daffodils
And sharp sharing,
You are a nest from heaven
For this feral human who always keeps
Her mouth pressed
To the sky
Miniature Moon 