I Hold My Mother’s Hand While God Reads Names from the Book of Life
| She’s in Italy. I am not. She isn’t either, but holds a postcard of the Trevi Fountain in Rome. I would’ve liked to eat gelato along the rail, she says. Don’t make me sing that Three Coins song, she says. Neither one of us knows the words exactly, but gelato from Il Melograno sounds good. Chocolate, I ask her? Chocolate, she replies. Remember the time we got lost trying to find our way to your grandmother’s farm? Even though you could remember the last meal you ate there? I say. I am going to get you straciatella, it’s like chocolate, but Italian, I say. Good enough, says my mother as I and the light in the room bend over the bed in the late afternoon. I remember the bread, she says, and the chicken my grandmother made me kill in the yard. Say something grand in Italian, she says. Campidoglio! I say, though I don’t know what I am trying saying. Should I see if we can get you to the bathroom or should I call the nurse? It’s hard to forget, she says, a meal you saw clucking in the yard. We can manage on our own, she says. She doesn’t like being touched by strangers, doesn’t know anymore how to make her body rise. We manage, barely. In the bathroom, breathless, the mirror paints our portrait, Pieta in reverse. This sink could be Trevi, I say, don’t get too close, you might fall in. So much for Italy, she says, breathing hard through the doctor’s guesswork of her lungs. I thought we were prepared, could manage somehow. Though now I know I’ll never have us ready in time. Listen to the poem here. |
Jory Mickelson’s first book, WILDERNESS//KINGDOM, is the inaugural winner of the Evergreen Award Tour from Floating Bridge Press and winner of the 2020 High Plains Book Award in Poetry. Their publications include Court Green, Poetry Northwest, DIAGRAM, Terrain.org, and The Rumpus. Learn more about their work at www.jorymickelson.com
Both of my parents are art educators, so I grew up looking at books of art, especially Italian art. This poem was a wondering if any of us might actually get to Italy and see that art in person—it contends with mortality and art’s ability to maybe live beyond us.
Both of my parents are art educators, so I grew up looking at books of art, especially Italian art. This poem was a wondering if any of us might actually get to Italy and see that art in person—it contends with mortality and art’s ability to maybe live beyond us.