Mother in Satin


On Saturday nights, my mother

took off her blues jeans,
put on a red satin dress
with a wide circle skirt
that swished when she danced.

Or, a black brocade sheath dress
with a peplum of white lace
and rhinestone earrings
that jangled like ice cubes.

Or, to backyard parties, a pink
waffle pique with a sewn-in
brassiere and laces up the back.

In springalator high heels,
open at the toe, she twirled
across the patio onto the grass,

unwinding like a bolt of organza,
her Tabu perfume simmering
in the torchlight, she danced

past the clothesline, past the built-in
barbecue, past the ornamental
fish pond, turning
into herself for the night.

-Deep Red, Event Horizon 1993



Queens


I loved the flat sassy
bodies of my paper dolls:
movie queens,
hands on hips,
lips in a frozen pout,
glamour pusses
in tab-on fur capes.
More, I loved cardboard 
Dale Evans,
Queen of the Cowgirls,
in her fringed suede jacket
and high-strutting boots.
Days, she rode Buttermilk
roping outlaws with Roy.
At sundown,
when she clicked her spurs,
buttermilk biscuits popped
from her oven.  She sopped
them in syrup,
fed them to Roy.
Dale never got sticky,
never dropped a crumb,
never wore an apron,
was never jealous of Trigger
who shared their bed
whinnying and snorting
till sun up.

-Transforming Matter, PEARL Editions, 2000



Mother Tongue


My mother tongue
unrolls along the red dirt plain:
slow, tacky,
unfolding like the dream
that catches everything.

My red mother tongue
unrolls in rows of cotton,
alfalfa, fields of wheat,
and in the green water
of the silty river.

And in the back yard
on a summer’s night, in grass
thick with chiggers,
red ants, stickers.
My slick mother tongue

switches legs for talking ugly,
pitching a fit, throwing a hissy.
My slick red sticky mother tongue
can lick any little pistol,
and keeps the ring-tailed tooters

toeing the line.

-Deep Red, Event Horizon, 1993



Catching Her Dance


Mom looks straight at me
through too-big glasses,
hands a blur like birds in flight.
She’s Chattanooga Choo-Choo-ing 
throughout the house to get me  
off her back, prove she can still move, 
if she feels like moving.

I grew up watching her dance
across the slick linoleum 
of our kitchen floor 
to In the Mood and other tunes 
from her teens and World War II.

I try to catch her dance
on video, but my phone is new
and I don’t know much about 
the camera. What I am left with 
is this awkward still shot, 
snapped the moment she orders
put down that cell phone, Junie,
and watch me dance!
 
-Chiron Review, Spring 2015



Gravity


What binds me to this earth
are the hands of my children,
as I hold my mother
holding her mother
back to the mother
who begat us all.
This is gravity.
This is why we call the earth Mother,
why all rising is a miracle.

Deep Red, Event Horizon, 1993