Volume 2, Issue 1
The Poet Talks to Her Mother
Laura E. Davis
Mom says, Sometimes
you have stop watching the news
and go wash the dishes.
She picks up the crying crock pot,
swaddles it, pats its bottom, shushes.
I say, Art is not the enemy
of the television class.
I breathe from the bottom of my lung
picking up sticky chunks of glass.
Mom says, I wish I could afford to go
to India to find myself.
I had to find myself in the kitchen
with four kids wailing.
Her hands are always green
calluses, well-bitten fingernails.
I say, The suburbs are a labyrinth
covered by a tennis dome.
My hands are moss-covered
poems.
Mom says, I wonder how
many times I have driven
these same streets.
We watch as the sun dries
all the wet, white sheets.
Laura E. Davis is from Pittsburgh, the City of Champions. She is currently an MFA
candidate at Chatham University in poetry and nonfiction. Her poems are featured or
forthcoming in Redactions, dotdotdash and Pear Noir, among others.
She is the Founding Editor of Weave Magazine. You can read her blog at
http://deadouterspace.blogspot.com/.