The Child Of A Muse (Muse #9)
My mum sits up all morning, musing
over this and the other. It's okay,
like she is so thinking hard. She sparks
poems, she says. I'm not accusing
anyone, but when she picked me up
from school, she was like
Any ideas? And it is so confusing
in the refrigerator, now. The light
comes on, and there are dark verbs
where the cheese was. She is refusing
to move. She wears a towel turban,
and something she calls a shift.
She doesn't shift. And she is losing
the will to lift a lettuce. Too green,
she tells me. Fetch me an apple.
Her teeth screech on its skin, bruising
the flesh. In the afternoons, she tends
to her cactus, and chain-smokes. Oh,
when I grow up, I will be a muse.
April 2005