[I can’t see her clearly. Can you see your mother clearly? I was concocted] by Diane Seuss

[I can’t see her clearly. Can you see your mother clearly? I was concocted]

 

I can't see her clearly. Can you see your mother clearly? I was concocted

in the kettle of her body. Swam like a swan in a pool of her blood. From my

earliest days I called her by her name—Norma. But inside, always mommy.

I called out to her, even when I was far from home. In High Wycombe, peeling

peaches for dinner. Not like that, a stern woman said, telling me to slip the knife

just under the skin and pull it away from the flesh. Peeing outside the Hellfire

Caves on Midsummer Night. In Scotland, sleeping in a tent on the cold ground.

So far north the sky never got dark. Arrested in Germany for stealing a mug.

Man wearing lederhosen barking at me. Veins in his face ready to explode. Forced

to eat that awful white sausage the color of an underbelly. Bad strawberries. Shitting

myself on the train from Segovia. Giving birth, cut through the gut, the layer of fat

and uterus exposed to the cold room and its attendants. And now in my solitude

which matches her solitude like mother-daughter dresses she'd disdain. Do you see

how I persist in telling you about the flowers when I mean to describe the rain?