Poetry |

“My Mother” and “Malcah”

My Mother

 

 

Still she is an other.

My fears make her

remote as a last ridge

 

rife with veins and caves

(the conceits of veins and caves),

slippery, scary to climb,

 

her summit crowned in cloud.

 

Witnessed from death’s distance,

her lovely skirt swaying,

she carries with her her frame,

 

but I lose her in my mystery.

 

Still she blooms somewhat,

as if stepping forward from her body

into the character I love

 

with all my failings.

I try not to falter further,

 

not to deny in her

her half-fathomed humanness

and make of her another relation —

mother, producer, a kind of partner —

 

I a male full of males,

of female born.

 

Mother, you of unswum pools,

your grotto so deep

I shy in the shallows,

 

I reach across to offer

you my myopic eye,

 

I lose my footing,

I breaststroke to you,

 

you a woman full of yourself,

 

swimming to an inseparation

until with your lost body

you might give me birth again.

 

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

 

Malcah

— noun, queen. Hebrew.

 

The mother, deprived, needed more than could be provided;

I strained to serve as her first son.

 

She sang songs from WWI with her father that she sang

again, but who would listen? Not I, clearly her worst son.

 

Growing old, she grew bereft of earlier selves

and caressed my hand hard. A coerced son,

 

I put my hand away and kept courteous distance

but still there lay in me a thirst, a sun-

 

parched need to crawl against who she was,

the urgent, regnant mother, to be a nursed son.

 

Dead, she lay like a patient awaiting resuscitation

and I stood stupid beside her, the failed surgeon.

 

What tribute now can I tender

to restore what I did not give her — what reversion?

 

— None, she comes to say, I am past your laudation,

my Beloved; you are in me always, my averse son, my immersed son, my cursed son.

Contributor
David Groff
David Groff‘s third book of poems, Live in Suspense, will be published in spring 2023. His previous book, Clay (Trio House, 2013), was chosen by Michael Waters for the Louise Bogan Award. His book Theory of Devolution (Illinois, 2002) was selected by Mark Doty for the National Poetry Series. He co-edited two anthologies, the Lambda-winning Who’s Ver Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners and Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to
AIDSAn independent book editor, he teaches in the M.F.A. program at the City College of New York.
Posted in Poetry

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