After We Saw What There Was to See - Lawrence Raab

 

After we saw what there was to see

we went off to buy souvenirs, and my father

waited by the car and smoked. He didn’t need

a lot of things to remind him where he’d been.

Why do you want so much stuff?

he might have asked us. “Oh, Ed,” I can hear

my mother saying, as if that took care of it.

 

After she died I don’t think he felt any reason

to go back through all those postcards, not to mention

the glossy booklets about the Singing Tower

and the Alligator Farm, the painted ashtrays

and Lucite paperweights, everything we carried home

and found a place for, then put away

in boxes, then shoved far back in our closets.

 

He’d always let my mother keep track of the past,

and when she was gone—why should that change?

Why did I want him to need what he’d never needed?

I can see him leaning against our yellow Chrysler

in some parking lot in Florida or Maine.

It’s a beautiful cloudless day. He glances at his watch,

Lights another cigarette, looks up at the sky.

The Fear of Oneself - Sharon Olds

As we get near the house, taking off our gloves,

the air forming a fine casing of

ice around each hand,

you say you believe I would hold up under torture

for the sake of our children. You say you think I have

courage. I lean against the door and weep,

the tears freezing on my cheeks with brittle

clicking sounds.

I think of the women standing naked

on the frozen river, the guards pouring

buckets of water over their bodies till they

glisten like trees in an ice storm.

I have never thought I could take it, not even

for the children. It is all I have wanted to do,

to stand between them and pain. But I come from a

long line

of women

who put themselves

first. I lean against the huge dark

cold door, my face glittering with

glare ice like a dangerous road,

and think about hot pokers, and goads,

and the skin of my children, the delicate, tight,

thin, top layer of it

covering their whole bodies, softly

glimmering.

DAUGHTER - Lisel Mueller

My next poem will be happy,

I promise myself. Then you come

with your deep eyes, your tall jeans,

your narrow hands, your wit,

your uncanny knowledge, and

your loneliness. All the flowers

your father planted, all

the green beans that have made it,

all the world’s recorded pianos

and this exhilarating day

cannot change that.

The Forms - Sharon Olds

I always had the feeling my mother would

die for us, jump into a fire

to pull us out, her hair burning like

a halo, jump into water, her white

body going down and turning slowly,

the astronaut whose hose is cut

falling

         into

              blackness. She would have

covered us with her body, thrust her

breasts between our chests and the knife,

slipped us into her coat pocket

outside the showers. In disaster, an animal

mother, she would have died for us,

but in life as it was

she had to put herself

first.

She had to do whatever he

told her to do to the children, she had to

protect herself. In war, she would have

died for us, I tell you she would,

and I know: I am a student of war,

of gas ovens, smothering, knives,

drowning, burning, all the forms

in which I have experienced her love.

The Clasp - Sharon Olds

She was four, he was one, it was raining, we had colds,

we had been in the apartment two weeks straight,

I grabbed her to keep her from shoving him over on his

face, again, and when I had her wrist

in my grasp I compressed it, fiercely, for a couple

of seconds, to make an impression on her,

to hurt her, our beloved firstborn, I even almost

savored the stinging sensation of the squeezing, the

expression, into her, of my anger,

"Never, never again," the righteous

chant accompanying the clasp. It happened very

fast—grab, crush, crush,

crush, release—and at the first extra

force, she swung her head, as if checking

who this was, and looked at me,

and saw me—yes, this was her mom,

her mom was doing this. Her dark,

deeply open eyes took me

in, she knew me, in the shock of the moment

she learned me. This was her mother, one of the

two whom she most loved, the two

who loved her most, near the source of love

was this.

Telemachus' Kindness - Louise Glück

When I was younger I felt

sorry for myself

compulsively; in practical terms,

I had no father; my mother

lived at her loom hypothesizing

her husband's erotic life; gradually

I realized no child on that island had

a different story; my trials

were the general rule, common

to all of us, a bond

among us, therefore

with humanity: what

a life my mother had, without

compassion for my father's

suffering, for a soul

ardent by nature, thus

ravaged by choice, nor had my father

any sense of her courage, subtly

expressed as inaction, being

himself prone to dramatizing,

to acting out: I found

I could share these perceptions

with my closest friends, as they shared

theirs with me, to test them,

to refine them: as a grown man

I can look at my parents

impartially and pity them both: I hope

always to be able to pity them.

Telemachus' Guilt - Louise Glück

Patience of the sort my mother

practiced on my father

(which in his self-

absorption he mistook

for tribute though it was in fact

a species of rage--didn't he

ever wonder why he was

so blocked in expressing

his native abandon?): it infected

my childhood. Patiently

she fed me; patiently

she supervised the kindly

slaves who attended me, regardless

of my behavior, an assumption

I tested with increasing

violence. It seemed clear to me

that from her perspective

I didn't exist, since

my actions had

no power to disturb her: I was

the envy of my playmates.

In the decades that followed

I was proud of my father

for staying away

even if he stayed away for

the wrong reasons;

I used to smile

when my mother wept.

I hope now she could

forgive that cruelty; I hope

she understood how like

her own coldness it was,

a means of remaining

separate from what

one loves deeply.

Telemachus' Detachment - Louise Glück

When I was a child looking

at my parents' lives, you know

what I thought? I thought

heartbreaking. Now I think

heartbreaking, but also

insane. Also

very funny.

Beauty: A Poem - John McDermott

A few months before

my older son took his life

he called home and told his mom

I saw beauty

and know what you and Dad

have been talking about.

I was up so late last night

that I looked out from my balcony

and saw the sun come up.

It was so beautiful that

I just wanted to tell you.

I love you, Mom.