aayoungmy mother is vintage lovely
this Kentucky woman
who displays a tobacco store Indian
on her front porch
makes tea like sweet creek water
knows how to pin curl hair
can identify horse apple
crab apple
and peach trees
who remembers what
flower and occasion
Sunday church
corsages are for
i put on some water for tea
then decided to mop the floors
of our new little nest
before the furniture gets carried in
before the rest of our lives happen
Murphy’s Oil Soap
water and sunshine into a bucket
carried through the echoing emptiness
of what will be
over original hardwood
placed there in 1941
i love to clean
the ritual of it
i write in my thoughts as i work
images painting themselves
into spaces around my gentle humming
spreading wet across the grain
seeing hands that mopped this floor
before me
wives husbands
fathers mothers
lovers and
put-upon teenagers
oh this house
has a history
built the year
the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor
it’s all still there
nailed down memories
layers of time entombed in wax
someone stood in that living room and heard
we dropped the bomb
we landed at Normandy
of a flag raised in Iwo-Jima
Kennedy was dead
Vietnam was a lost cause only good
for folded flags being handed to weeping mothers
Nixon was a crook
Reagan and John Lennon had been shot
the Berlin wall had fallen
i heard first steps
crying babies
crying widows
joyous laughter
say cheese
wine glasses clinking together
realizing with a smile
this floor is mine
the foundation of a family
and i will love it
then
the teapot
began to whistle
spring is quietly sneaking
on satin slippered feet
down winter’s hallway
she listens smiling
behind closed doors
tulips are snoring gently
but soon to wake
daffodils are whispering they should
arrive fashionably late
stock market bees buzz of nothing
but honey drippings and ticker tape
pansies sip tea
gossiping about cherry blossoms
who wear pearl earrings
too willing to open their petals
doomed to fall for a rake
Sunday is the day
your old ghosts,
demons,
and crushing failures
drop in
for a spot of tea.
Memaw,
I have dreamed about you
every night this week.
I would like to think you are visiting me
from the great beyond.
We’re in your house and
I can hear your voice,
I can smell your skin,
I can hear you laugh,
I can hear you sigh.
I can watch you smooth the table cloth
down with your hands
and wash the kitchen counter.
We watch Gone With the Wind together,
then have tea.
We look through an old Sears catalog,
we sort your quilt pieces,
we string buttons.
After we visit the Halls Gap Overlook,
we end the night at The Dairy Freeze.
I love you immeasurably.
The older I get,
the more I miss you.
Your absence is enough
to fill the world,
Mabel Spaw Bates.
*
Rest In Peace
atop a Tibetan mountain
peaking through
a perfect cloud
i will take high tea
with the dalai lama
the platters
pots
and cups
brought to us
upon the backs
of meticulously trained
boston terriers
billy goats
and bull frogs
who
when given honey
wag away happily
his holiness will tell me a bad joke
as he pours
“Why is the Christian heaven paved with gold, but covered in newspaper?
Angel poop.”
to which i counter
“How do you make the universe laugh?
Tell it your plans…”
we giggle into our tea cups
i shouldn’t have done it
hindsight being holy fuck
the check was paid
our table cloth seemed more white
because we were in kentucky
i remember the moment
a gust of wind violated
the stoic iron tables
where we held
doomed court
along the river promenade
that look is his eyes
what it was to see a man’s heart break
a red sea
parted in his tea cup
the pitcher of cream
screamed blasphemy
bridge lights shook into new evening green
fearing the blackening sky
when i admitted
to him
god
and the over priced pastries
that you were loved best
and kept
alone
with the word
always
it is sacrilege for me to say
i don’t care for the 4th of july
staking our independence perpetually
on someone else’s claim
i’m not unpatriotic for saying
every death in battle
is a death in vain
blowing our thumbs off
detonating explosives
is an american tradition
if we love our troops so much
let’s stop finding new and improved ways
for them to die
we sailed on a refugee ship from religious oppression
so that we could become more oppressive
the dutch wouldn’t let us stay more than a few nights
they didn’t want our puritanical bullshit
fucking up their children’s minds
my grandmother’s ghost
beaded with genocide
told me
you can’t discover a place
where other people are already living
america was built on a native graveyard
that’s why our culture is plagued
by angry poltergeists
and our child’s hands are glued
to a static tv
listening to paul revere
scream
they’re here
the british weren’t so bad
besides
i love tea
saturday
you are lovely
in your late morning robe
my ears have forgotten alarm clocks exist
invited to the table
by a red rosebush
i have tea with my closest ghosts
remembering
god lives in your mother’s kitchen
blueberry bagels are making the tangerines suspicious
i tell them julia child credited her longevity to red meat and gin
a cherry tree trial convenes beyond the window
the robin in the nest
just confessed
she was mae west
in another life
as i write
.
death perpetually sits in
the corner of my room
reading freud’s conceits
.
or when he’s feeling particularly
mischievous
kafka
.
he is an old man now
as our time together is deep
smelling of camphor and whiskey
and cologne deemed a sin during biblical times
.
my constant companion
since the age of six
we have many times shared plastic play set high tea
and brushed barbie hair
forced emily dickinson to eat bugs together
.
death in a doll house
.
he taught me long division
and later how to drive
bustled my prom dress
stood in the empty place
for the father daughter dance
at my halloween horror wedding
then sent me to mortuary college
.
how easily he became
my every electrified motivation
.
i so willingly devoured the
chocolate covered cherries
sugar-coated just for me
.
he has me hooked
on his sick sentimentality
.
luxuriating in the loss
agony so sweet upon the palate
injected into veins long desiccated
living in skin of unnatural colors
.
all i wanted was a mommy in the kitchen
a daddy in the den
children in the treehouse
a reckless devil in hell
and a responsible god in heaven
.
so when it all died
i tried to become it
and i have failed
.
though i have receipts that reflect an attempt at a life lived
spanning the miles between California and New Jersey
.
today
he smiles at me wickedly
with his three good teeth
and says
.
remember baby girl
you will die
in the same place
you began
.
fearing unknown noises in the hall
.
right here
with
me