You are here

Mom, he said,

Author: 
Caroline Knox

If we put all the

alphabet blocks on

the card table, we could build

a house, instead of playing

this stupid card game.

 

I was glad to hear that. He

built a Tower of Pisa

and a fake Gothic cathedral

full of leftover sugar

Easter rabbits.

Then he ate one. UGH.

 

share

Part of 'In the Beginning of Covid-19', a series of poems curated by Jason Dodge in 2020

Explore more

RELATED POEMS

The Bee Mother

by
Pascale Petit

I want to go back now, through the buzzing darkness.

I want to go into that humming hive awake,

wearing the net curtain you called my veil.

 

I want to walk down childhood’s garden

as that girl who married her mother,

through the marguerite bed

 

to that nest, where my bee-queen lies

deep in her brood chamber.

I want to see the honeycomb of your mind.

 

I want to look into your compound eyes

where I’m reflected as an angry swarm.

I want to be that daughter whose mother has stung her

 

because she’s a rival,

who’s still pumping venom into her.

I want to be that childless worker

 

who dared to sting back, shreds

of my torn abdomen hanging off you

as I leave my stinger behind.

 

I have cleaned the window of my self until I gleam.

I want you to see how radiant I am

on this, my wedding day.

 

With all the love I now know,

I want to brush the halo of your hair

that’s grown into a comet

 

and mend the delicate rays of your wings.

I’ll place royal jelly in your coffin for your last flight

and close the moonlit petals of your face.

 

Family
Children & Childhood
Animals & Pets
Enjoy this poem

April Incense

by
Isobel Dixon

Running after rain and breathing deeply

in the just-splashed streets, I run into a wave

of guava washed over a wall: night-fruit

 

exhalation, courting moths. Spiralling to child again, 

the dusk’s soft tent an outspread tablecloth, lit up 

with tiny pin-pricks from a distant grown-up sphere. 

 

Trapped, fidgeting through talk-lulled

dinner times, until – after eternity – we hear

the old familiar glass-on-metal scrape

 

as some strong-wristed aunt untwists a Consol jar,

so that the scent of heaven, pudding, can escape.

Sweet coffee drained, they tread the stairs to sleep,

 

full up with own-grown riches and parental cares.

And then the farm – at least as far as dam

and defunct antique tractor, chicken run,

 

the fence – is ours, keen children’s kingdom.

We, a tribe more certain of our sovereignty

and skill, down in that hopscotch dust – 

 

perfecting aim and balance 

with low-centre-of-gravity confidence – 

than we will ever be, or have been since.

 

Children & Childhood
Enjoy this poem

Malt loaf

by
Gaia Holmes

It was the dark bread my mother fed me

to pacify my tears.

When I saw it on the kitchen table

I knew it meant departure.

She’d be slicing it into squares,

loading it with butter as he kissed me: as he

gently unhooked my hands from his neck

and walked out to the car.

She’d be laying it in a brown circle

on the big blue plate

as I watched the Renault rise over the hill.

 

She’d give it me with warm milk and honey.

The butter thickened in my mouth,

spread itself like wet silk in my throat.

I’d mould each slice into a small lump

until the raisins bled black juices

and my fingertips were slick with grease,

I’d squeeze it like the clay he let me play with:

the stuff we dug from river banks

spiced with bracken, loam and willow bark.

My mother would keep slicing and spreading

until I stopped crying: once I ate a whole loaf.

 

Now the spices seem too sinister for comfort.

The molasses jars my palette, reminds me

of tar, long roads and car doors slamming.

I do not like the taste of desertion.

 

Emotions & Feelings
Children & Childhood
Food & Drink
Enjoy this poem