Mother and Daughter

Linda, you are leaving your old body now,

It lies flat, an old butterfly, all arm, all leg, all wing, loose as an old dress.

I reach out toward it but my fingers turn to cankers and I am motherwarm and used, just as your childhood is used.

Question you about this and you hold up pearls.

Question you about this and you pass by armies.

Question you about this — you with your big clock going, its hands wider than jackstraws — and you'll sew up a continent.

Now that you are eighteen I give you my booty, my spoils, my Mother & Co. and my ailments.

Question you about this and you'll not know the answer — the muzzle at the oxygen, the tubes, the pathways, the war and the war's vomit.

Keep on, keep on, keep on, carrying keepsakes to the boys, carrying powders to the boys, carrying, my Linda, blood to the bloodletter.

Linda, you are leaving your old body now.

You've picked my pocket clean and you've racked up all my poker chips and left me empty and, as the river between us narrows, you do calisthenics, that womanly leggy semaphore.

Question you about this and you will sew me a shroud and hold up Monday's broiler and thumb out the chicken gut.

Question you about this and you will see my death drooling at these gray lips while you, my burglar, will eat fruit and pass the time of day.