SOUND WAVES, LASER BEAMS, IMPULSES, AND SIGNALS
I feel like a mother when I wear some
one else's shoes, when I tie someone else's
laces into rabbits' feet in darkness
on the front stairs at dawn, waiting
for the mailman to come and rub
my heels together til we're home, I feel
like a mother talking loudly around
young boys and their fragrant tufts
of armpit hair on the subway, I feel like
a mother revving my engine on the highway,
in the yard, and when I am not behind
the wheel making
horn noises with my
nose and mouth, I feel like a mother
who has forgotten how to breathe water,
insisting that everyone
ought to be breathing
air by now, I feel like a mother when
my mother is dead although it hasn't happened
yet that I feel like a motherless child, I
feel like a mother when I make a list of names
that calls all my enemies out and I post the list
on a grocery store bulletin board, the T's
all crossed as ugly moustaches, I feel like a mother
when I shave my beard and all my children tiptoe
around the kitchen sink giggling
and swinging from their blades,
I feel like a mother when I am offered
glasses of wine without pieces of bread
soaking in them, when I transmit my own
signals from antennas from a jar
in the earth to a cage full of animals
in the living room, I feel like a mother
for cooking those books
for you, but that wasn't love,
it was history.
© Jen Tynes 2008
