After a Stroke, My Mother Examines a Picture of the Icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe, by Tom Daley4/3/2018 After a Stroke, My Mother Examines a Picture of the Icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe Lady, why is your countenance the color of vole feet draggling from the jaws of a cat? What tribe of mud daubers stung stars onto your mantle? Who names the fumbles that topple from your breasts? Your counterspell blunts the jagged crescent of every campesino’s charmed and smoldering scythe. Your spooled mouth waits to unfurl the ticker tape of your vow. In torchlight, your eyebrows fly to heaven on thin wings of soot. Only the moon survives the crush of your heel. Virgin of Guadalupe, I pray for your handshake, I pray for your ribs, I pray for your hips, the ones tugged dry while expelling that bountiful head ordained to gnaw all the hangnails of history. Steer me, Lady, through the lightning that browns the mountains. Drown the infections that flush my cough into a gargle. Virgin, who never burned a supper, strip me of strangles, grizzles, knots, of scratched jazz skipping the shadows out of my sleep. Princess of the Aztecs, thread my poncho with roses this winter that I might adorn that tomb slab where even cayenne would cool, where your son’s brain was looted of its chemical salves, and where his feet, which stretched the sea smooth as a conga head, refused to rest at right angles to the ground. Kiss me, mother of Mexico’s hope-- your little mouth is still rusty with smoke. Tom Daley This poem was first published in Rhino and in the poet's book, House You Cannot Reach--Poems in the Voice of My Mother and Other Poems. Tom Daley was a machinist for over two decades. His poetry has appeared in Harvard Review, Massachusetts Review, 32 Poems, Fence, Denver Quarterly, Crazyhorse, Barrow Street, Prairie Schooner, Witness, Poetry Ireland Review, and elsewhere. Recipient of the Dana Award in Poetry and the Charles and Fanny Fay Wood Prize from the Academy of American Poets, he leads poetry writing workshops at the Online School of Poetry, Boston Center for Adult Education, and Lexington Community Education.
1 Comment
Caprice
6/12/2018 10:02:52 am
What a wonderful poem! The language is so fresh and alive. I particularly love "Only the moon survives
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