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).
F. 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.