Mother
A sac to dump monsters, ghosts and dark devils. Your daughter
calls you to empty her fears. Slippery grime that lines
her young organs, you sag under the weight of her dread.
To think you were womb that held her lightness– she lentil
at 6 weeks, melon at 40– you, sunshine filled, buoyant balloon,
she, floating lemon, grapefruit, suspended, coconut bounce
in an ocean of glow. “I feel like a landfill,” you say, your arms flagging,
“I feel like I fill her emptiness” –muñeca que quita las penas,
Lupita– you sigh, arms downed– where are the good spirits?
Ahead a halo, a radiance, white, gleams in the evening light,
white clapboard barn floats in the meadow on its face the arc
of the crescent moon: a horseshoe: arms open: it welcomes them.
*muñeca que quita las penas, Lupita: doll that takes sorrows away
Valy Steverlynck
Valy Steverlynck, a Pushcart Prize nominee, is an Argentine-American artist, emerging poet, mother and oyster farmer based in Maine. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Journal of the American Medical Association, Gordon Square Review, Literary Mama, Main Street Rag and Cider Press Review, among others. Her art has been exhibited at venues including the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, deCordova Museum, Fuller Museum of Art and Centro Recoleta, Argentina. Valy can be reached at va*************@***il.com.
