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Karen Kovacik Page 3
My Mother the Monopolist
Thimble
Queen of the needle,
she always chose this tiny
silver silo as her
token. Emblem of thrift,
no prodigal, it
tap-tapped at even the swankest
addresses. She
embroidered pillowcases with tulips
while she waited for
my brother to get out of jail.
Utilities
Her nightmare: a
world without plumbing or light.
The first on the
block to get a dishwasher,
she seized control
of every faucet, every bulb,
and rapped her steel
pinkie in triumph
when our rates went
through the roof.
B & O
She smelled of Jean
Naté bath salts and Russian musk,
maybe VO5 setting
lotion or Dippity-Do.
Never Bacon & Onion,
never Barnyard & Offal.
Yet she championed
this reeking iron beast
that flattened our
billfolds each time it crossed us.
Baltic Avenue
Forget Park Place,
Boardwalk, or the luxury tax.
She always acquired
the tawdry purple street
no one else wanted.
Lovingly, she furnished it
with squat green
bungalows and cheap hotels.
Many a red night,
Dad blew his paycheck there.
Chance
When question marks
assailed her like boomerangs,
she simply built
more skyscrapers of pastel cash.
This was her
metropolis: the sun a fluorescent ring
on plaster sky,
while chili sweated on the stove.
She fanned herself
with fifties, cool and blue.
Return to the Mother Tongue I’m back in
my language, beyond the gilt All poems from Metropolis Burning (Cleveland State, 2005.
© Copyright,
Karen Kovacik. |