Life and Death Before Breakfast
My mother edges
out along the low stone wall
holding Mina’s hand
to show her the ripe
blueberries deer couldn’t filch.
I’m on the other
side when my daughter
slips and they’re going over,
slow motion ballet
where my mom folds arms
across her chest—Pharaoh of
falling—rolling in
the long grass beneath,
face calm, unconcerned. My girl
pops up then kneels down
beside grandma’s form:
Are you alright? Let’s do that
again. Mom
is fine,
but for a second
she wasn’t: her hip shattered
I was driving her
to the hospital
emptying her bedpan holding
her hand kissing her
goodbye. She picks up
the bowl, rejoins my daughter
to recoup spilled fruit.
2018 David Sullivan
David Allen
Sullivan’s books include: Strong-Armed Angels, Every
Seed of the Pomegranate, Arabic co-translation in Bombs
Have Not Breakfasted Yet, and Black Ice. Seed
Shell Ash, is forthcoming from Salmon Press. He
teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch
Review with his students, and lives in Santa Cruz, California,
with his family.
Wasn’t There When She Died
—for Wang Manliang 王满良
The translation professor with his rich baritone takes me hiking in Xi’an Qinling mountains.
We find a squeaking silk moth (Rhodinia fugax).
He urges it to perform by singing in Chinese, but it’s only when we warble out Cat Stevens’ Moonshadow that it sounds its shrill alarm.
Next morning’s red porridge and hard boiled egg remind him of his mother.
She pulls up a chair to sit across the table as he begins to cry.
The wings of the dead brush our wet faces.
I take his hand in mine but he pulls away, wipes behind glasses: Sorry. Don’t want. I . . .
©
Copyright, David Allen Sullivan . |