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Poem My Mother Doesn’t Want Right Now

by F. Douglas Brown

my mother down the hall fast       like a train
or a bus blurting away       her sprint turned

to tears:—and then into drops
of shit       a trail of shit and she

is a paper icon       is bread and dirt
crumbling in the murderous hands of the hall

I try to scrub fast       fast as my mother’s leap
into the bathroom and into embarrassment—:

soiled gown       closed door       tears to
the ceiling       thudding between the fan blades

am I right saying nothing       letting this slide
off the now clean tile       pine disinfecting

the moment       am I right as I quietly wash her
clothes       erasing the residue of what age is doing to her

*     *     *

This piece originally appeared in Vinyl Poetry and Prose on June 12, 2016. It was later republished in Floodgate Poetry Series Vol. 3 (Upper Rubber Boot Books, 2016).

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F. Douglas BrownF. Douglas Brown is the author of Zero to Three (University of Georgia Press, 2014), recipient of the 2013 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. He also coauthored with poet Geffrey Davis, Begotten (November 2016), a chapbook of poetry from Upper Rubber Boot Books as part of URB’s Floodgate Poetry series. Mr. Brown teaches English at Loyola High School of Los Angeles, and is both a Cave Canem and Kundiman fellow. When he is not teaching, writing, or with his two children, Isaiah and Olivia, he is busy DJing in the greater Los Angeles area.

October 18, 2017 Alex Simand

2017 marked the 20th anniversary of the founding of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles. We are commemorating this occasion with a special edition of our journal.

Lunch Ticket Special: Celebrating 20 Years of Antioch’s MFA in Creative Writing features new and previously published works by Antioch MFA alumni.

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A Word from the Editor

Social justice can have an expansive or narrow focus. It can emanate from a handful of the like-minded, or a community—or even a country. It can encompass two billion Facebook users or the entire global community. On a daily basis, we telescope from the personal to the interpersonal, our friendships and peers, and then outwards to the struggles of communities, societal ills, or global epidemics. These spheres often clash…

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    • A Word from the Editor
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