Still, peel the pomegranate seeds
From their white, pithy flesh-
You do it better than I can.
Still, prove the breads of the grain
You'd plucked by yourself-
You do it better than I do-
In your obscure crag of a settlement
Somewhere across our Western curtain
Where meadows of yarrow
Are plentiful and not foreign,
And riddled with flowers I recall but don't
Quite know the name of
In our mother tongue.
It's always been such a problem.
Imagine not knowing
How to talk to your own mother.
To be eliminated by imaginary monsters
She'd implanted in me from birth.
I have two odd names from her,
And I am overruled by the colors
A horn of plenty gives
Through a surplus of her
Native and imported goods
During a holiday of giving
I know you'd consider barbaric
On the other side of our current curtain.
Imagine not knowing
What to call the fruits your forebears
Liked to give one another
As alms in their meadows
Of plentiful yarrow.
And these flowers,
O these flowers!
I know you really love them.
And I do too-
Just in my own language of them.
I wish I could explain it to you.
Imagine not knowing
How to communicate such things.
Would a woman,
Would a mother know
Each expression of them?
Could she dictate which each
Crown of a rosemary meant?
Do they have those
Where she comes from?
Imagine not knowing
What is in your mother's home country.
Mother, you know it better than I do.
I know you think of me
As less here, in our Western curtain.
I can sense it in your face.
I feel it in my bones!
And In my heart, I know it!
The way you look at me,
That death stare
Only discrimination could have.
I hear you say it,
As if you're wishing
Upon a nameless star
To annihilate me
And where I come from.
Morbidity-
Hidden in the face of
An indignant mother.
Indignant, indignant, indignant!
In your shining copper-gold updo,
Your earrings and a wedding ring
On your mutilated finger,
Like a broken brass knuckle.
Your people's fashion
Was always so distasteful.
I could feel it now, your ring.
Its barbs
Are sharp as bigoted teeth.
It makes me feel like a child.
That innocence,
Curiously touching a mother's things.
Where did it go,
That child in me.
Mother, do you know?
Imagine not knowing
How to ask your mother such a thing.
Imagine not knowing
Whether or not her looks meant good.
I always go back to it,
That look-
My eyes never stayed
Level to the buildings of brick
Across our hilltop manor
Where cement lives and breathes.
Not to the Mediterranean,
But to a horizon of grief.
Mother, imagine that look.
Imagine understanding
Love to a malleable child
Was neither conditional or unconditional.
Imagine not knowing
What it means when your mother looks at you.
It's as if she already knows
I'd go to hell before I even knew death.
I know
It's because of my unique temperament.
Sometimes, my quiet disposition
That had trespassed her own,
I assume.
Indignant, indignant, indignant!
Mother, are there more like me
Where you come from?
I don't know if I'd ever go back there-
Over this curtain.
It would be treacherous, unnecessarily dangerous.
I wouldn't hear
A standing ovation.
It's not my commemorative proclamation.
I wouldn't be covered
In a Marian blue shawl,
And it would be too black
Where I'd stand.
Would I ever know
That life across this curtain?
That land of now-polluted yarrow,
And those meadows
You've watched from afar-
In that land of mothers
Who'd cast you down to the underworld
Without a second thought.
From you to me,
It had already happened.
Mother, do you remember?
I've told you everything about it,
And you'd given me that same stare.
How dare you?
Indignant, indignant, indignant!
Death stares don't understand sorrow,
And neither do you,
A woman of various traumatic complexities.
You disparaged me for it.
You gave me that look,
And annihilated everything
That had already been annihilated.
Imagine not wanting
To talk to your mother about such things.
She must know what not to do
Better than I can.
Mother, are they the same
Where you come from?
Tell me-
I'm a frozen moth.
No matter the look,
I'm already there.
I'm the seed of a battered woman,
Of a battered mother
To idolize,
Until the cherubim
Of my favorite paintings
Come to tell me
How sorry they are
For having such an unloving mother.
Indignant, indignant, indignant!
With them, I eternally wander in perpetuity.
Do they have them
Where you come from?
Mother, I am a son of the West now,
You cannot change me.
I live on this continent,
And I knowingly ornament myself
In things I know you wouldn't me to-
White knots and pink triangles,
Purple hands and beds of narcissi,
Like Persephone after the taking.
I'm forever abducted
In this foreign land.
Mother, you shall not annihilate what I am.
