Engraved on my memory;
mother is crumpled on the floor.
I, more alert than I have ever been
She heaves herself up into a sitting position,
A moving corpse from what I gather.
She battles the laws of gravity with respirators.
No mechanical aids adjust her sense of time.
I need her to move on.
I need her, to move on.
As Beckett would say,
"Let us move-on to less melancholy matters."
So I visit the graveyard
To read the tombstone and thus obtain
the dates of her birth and death.
I visit the graveyard to remember my numbers, my dates, my death.
4 comments:
Hi Nooshin and welcome.
The line "mother is crumpled on the floor" is excellent, it functions so well and yet it is so unexpected. I also like the repetition in the middle of the poem because it allows the reader an insight to the speaker of this poem. The heaviness of the last line is also an interesting way to approach death and loss... it makes me think, so thank you.
There are several lines in this poem that I really like for what they say and how they flow. I think there are a couple lines that throw the rhythm off but that's besides the point. "Mother is crumpled on the floor" works in so many ways. "She battles the laws of gravity with respirators" is a solid description as well as a marker for what has happened to the mother in this poem. The last line is excellent as well as it personalizes the poem and punctuates the idea that death effects the living more than the dead. Nice job!
There are so many powerful moments in this poem. I found the lines, "I need her to move on. / I need her, to move on." particularly poignant and emotionally captivating. There is a tragic paradox offered in these lines, accomplished via a single comma: in playing with the rhythm of the moment with such precise simplicity, this to me embodies the essence of poetry.
Hi There!
Thank you for your comments. This is my first time writing for a blog. And, to be honest, I have a hard time coming up with new material every day.
I am obviously not as well "versed" as all of you are in poetics.
The rhythms that I try to emulate through my writing basically come from the street and the ghetto. I also tend to write in the tradition of stream of consciousness. I later go back and omit lines.
My hopes are that the reader will recognize a site of "violence" in my writing.
I am so happy to be sharing this space with all of you, by the way.
Best,
Nooshin
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