November 2021
Bio Note: I am stumbling and slogging my way into autumn with the usual mixture of anticipation of homey holidays and dread for the accompanying heightened sense of loss as memories of past times and those passed seem to surface with more urgency at this time of year. As usual, too, I am grateful for this community and the support and inspiration I receive here.
ICU Daydreams
The tobacco notes on my mind's tongue cling yellow, staining even the holes in its weave sticky with tar and regret. Her heart beats steady but her mind is stuck in the past, in its groove of morphine-addled dreaming, and will it ever emerge? Will she stand again, unsteady, and her hands – what will they do with no occupation – minus the flicking of cigarette ashes into small glass trays? Lipstick lingers on the filtered ends, a net the toxins slipped through, to tumor her lungs twice & now tackle her gray matter. My mother, my mater, my sometimes foe in filial combat. Now the roles flip-flop, and flop again as she lies in wait for what God & modern medicine can provide, while he, my son, in utero, is burdened with the byproducts of cortisol, nature, nurture, history, and soul.
Originally published in The Blue Nib
Grapefruit
What night-ranging animal comes upon the thick skin, pebbled, lined with bitter pith, and selects this for its meal? This fruit evolved to spread seeds, for another being with a taste for toughness, for pulp, for cutting juice running down the back of its throat. I have found castoff peels on my grass – shells, emptied, seeds soon to pass, to sprout in another’s yard, become tree-cousins of mine, bearing fruit, acrid and disappointing to those seeking only sweetness.
Originally published in Muddy River Poetry Review
©2021 Betsy Mars
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