More from No Tell Motel

SOUND WAVES, LASER BEAMS, IMPULSES, AND SIGNALS

I feel like a mother when I wear
someone else's shoes, tie someone else's
laces into rabbits' feet in darkness
on the front stairs at dawn, wait
for the mailman to come & rub
my heels together til we're home. I feel
like a mother talking loudly around
young boys & their fragrant tufts
of armpit hair on the subway, & I rev my
engine on the highway, & when I’m not behind
the wheel making horn noises with my
nose & 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 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 & I post the list
on a grocery store bulletin board (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
& swinging from their blades,
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
cooking those books for you, but that
isn't love, that’s history.

© Jen Tynes 2008