(view original version of this piece.)
(Note: words in [brackets] are occluded by
adjacent words in the original version.)
Love to a rose
[everything we
know to be good,
raised to be good]
love to a rose:
she will [be happy]
suffer a little, on the verge of leaving
like a rose, without ever knowing
her mother
like a rose, she is without a religion
and still holding the gate
[the] Her mother spends [her days] her life [of] [for] [in] with Art.
These things take a long time
“These things take a long time” (F 299-300).
Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, Falling (1973)
Disjointed images of birth and death—
not the word “love”
she is submerged and wrapped in oil
in the bottom of a waterfall
with the urge to feed swirling waters.
the city is out of balance,
the city dies by choice
holding the baby I Tried to be to her Mother
The novel leans over
the novel [never] leans over
to answer the [question] echo
waiting at the window
[she] the poet describes herself as
[middle-aged] an empty shell.
She is frozen like
[kids] this baby
is the first
[only] survivor
of [her]
[the restless]
her poetry
like the sun is small
as if it were still
but [I had the ashes]
she has Nothing
And,
[Everyone] Her mother loves you. . . .
Notes:
These collage poems gather and merge images from a 1934
Good Housekeeping Magazine and National Geographic Magazines from the 1980s
and 90s. Text is sourced from Mother Puzzles: Daughters and Mother in
Contemporary American Literature (Praeger - December 1989).