Mother ( III )

A throne of sponge soaked black

Pools with every pressure – the ass,

The side, the back, even the eye.

Anticipatory floating through a

Weightless house pulled me past it,

Beige and leering. An anchor would

Drop from the sky each time, flattening

My chest to mottled paper.

Despite their constant invitation to

Lounge I’ve grown to hate couches,

Comfort. A crib-cage, a plush prison, the

Stilled throbbing lace cocooning

My mother. He has one in scarlet, a

Monument of sorts. I drown in its

Redness, feeling her hammered

Across my lap.

There is always a herd in the upper

Level of department stores.

Firm, feather-filled. She sits or leans or

Lays in each one. Pleated skirt, hosiery,

Or the ghostly slip and camisole with a

Night’s worth of oil. Smudged face.

Twenty of her, staring at me,

On couches – What I’d give to

Breathe fire.



© 2015 BENJAMIN SMITH

Mother ( II )

You split me, a slow stacking of walls

In my middle. A black turtleneck

Shields the flannel, the form of force,

Lady Lumberjack. Your axe is Mitotic,

Wedging my softness in two. I do not

Wear duplicity well – your half tugged

Away more mass.

An unborn child is a needle,

Lubricated to jab a channel into me.

Brother, brother, you have knocked

Me up too with a mind avuncular.

A needle is a rake, scratching away

Another section of the pink of

Thinking.

What a laudable reduction, the stuffing

Of skulls ripped to strangers. A house of

Tusks. I am three brains. I am three eyes.

I am three lenses, not caked nearly enough

To blind me – which is still wholly my own?

The crinkled, shriveled one, leaking
Its cytoplasm.

© 2015 BENJAMIN SMITH

Mother ( I )

Her fingernails had been cut short
Nearly to the skin.
Ten thin white bands on each tip.
Ten rolling pins flattening a white
Napkin, smoothing it, jittering, like
Some great Olympian molding a plain
Or basin, a bowl for the ocean of her pain.

Her once-sculpted hair was limp,
Burgundy lips cracked with their
Absence of color. Her smile, amplified with
Twitches, and her eyes cradled a
Plate-grating wildness as she looked
Off into the valley of her thoughts.
Zip ties for shoelaces.
String is the enemy.

I had never been in an ambulance
Before. Neither the aft, nor the fore –
Fear wrangling me, face lassoed to
Dry and wet. Never felt it slide back
Into the sloughed off with such agility before –
Before, before, before
Her vomit parted the water
With two empty bottles, witnesses, weapons,
Stationed on the floor.



© 2015 BENJAMIN SMITH