Some days no one is my mother
but my mother. & my mother is no
longer a distance that cinches itself—
the flush on flush of the new
fever, the baby’s first floral-
heat nursed down—with a telephone
call. I could not gather, could not
collect your voice in fits
in tinder in sleep. So the flowerbeds:
empty. The endless ringing: all hesitation,
no digging. I wake to bury
you again, stumbling
for the rotary receiver on its vine—
swinging from the wall of a house
I left burning-small: votive
light throwing off no sound.
In the yard the petals all flame
& lantern. In the crib
my daughter moro-s herself
in heartbeat cycles, limbs sparked
apart with shock. The smoke of us both
rises: like a moon: like a pulse. & I am
alone in our surveillance, our time-
lapsed fevering burst into a single bloom
: the resurrected echo-light of your ambulance
dissolving through the walls.
from Little Envelope of Earth ConditionsFind more by Cori A. Winrock at the library
Copyright © 2020 Cori A. Winrock
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.