Flesh and Bone Zuihitsu
They think it’s been months since my mom tried to contact me.
The cousins say she’s reaching out to connect. I say it’s been years
of you are such a bitch and this whole family is done with you.
My therapist tells me I’m too resourceful and clever to let family
suck my will to live; I hear more work. She says step back.
Says observe the process and sends me an email
summary of our recent call. The subject header: Snow & Peace.
A picture of the oak in her Maryland yard.
It wears a floor length gown of white pin-dotted snow
accented with one green birdhouse, frosted cupcake feeder. It says
here, here is sustenance. How I want
to take all my therapist offers into the marrow of my mind.
Mother’s way of comforting was to declare me her own
flesh and blood. There is a bird called lammergeier,
German for lamb vulture. It raptors the bones of carrion,
drops them onto flat rocks to expose the marrow.
My therapist is one of these bone droppers. She asks
what I will gain from allowing my mother’s opinions to define me.
I see a little girl as a cloth napkin dropped beside bone china
where marrow has been sucked from the calf’s bone, just a baby,
cross-cut. Osso buco, Italian for bone with a hole.
The spongy cake of our bones consists of hematopoietic cells called
Poiesis, from ancient Greek, the emergence of something
that did not previously exist; also, poetry. That flesh and blood
is made of poetry, that lines break like bones, that I emerged
from the syntax of a mother who drops rotten rotten
daughter. Will I never find sustenance?
I find her wedding announcement, 1964, The Scranton Times.
Cake topper of a woman, the bride wore a Chantilly lace
and white silk organza chapel gown with a scalloped neck.
Her headpiece of sheer rosettes with a large flower on top
was edged in seed pearls. What about that seedless bird feeder
nailed to a frozen oak somewhere on the Delmarva Peninsula?
Peninsula, Latin for almost an island; or a daughter.
I worry about the birds. Remember they prepare for the cold,
stockpile seeds, and pack pockets of air around their bodies.
This poem was featured in Volume 2, Issue 2. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.