My poem about my mother’s final days, “Transformative,” is the featured poem for August in the beautiful online journal Thirteen Bridges. I am so thrilled with the presentation and honored to be included in this impressive literary magazine.
This is the link to see it live: Joanne Clarkson | August 25 Poem | Thirteen Bridges
I also wanted to include the poem itself:
Transformative
From the kitchen where I am
washing a week’s worth
of dishes, I watch my mother
watch television. Become herself
through someone else’s
script. She squints, lips parting.
Once at a séance, I saw a Medium
take on another being. She changed
her features to become a woman’s
dead sister. With messages. As if
those who have passed know us better
than we know ourselves. Where
we put the misplaced thing.
I watch my mother take back
the animation that so often leaves
her face now. She resurrects in artificial
light. Calls me by my name,
not her mother’s or her sister’s.
For about ten minutes we have
a conversation about real Christmases.
All human faces look basically
the same, until they don’t. Slope
of cheek bone, arch of lip
utterly individual. Today for an
instant, my mother transformed
into someone thirty years younger.
I stood behind her at the mirror
combing her thinning hair. Her brows
arcing into mine. The blue-hazel
of her eyes becoming the recognition
of two women sharing a life.