Joan McBride
I.
so we sat around a table drinking wine
at a couple of tables
many tables
100s of tables
no nachos
maybe a bowl of mixed nuts
a boiled egg
in a restaurant
many deserted parks after midnight
100s of bars
explain please
notes in margins
lost teenage years
bad seed connotations
worse drugs
many views from one mirror
II.
mine never wore a pair of slacks
mine smoked camels (want one now, tapped out of a pack, filterless, zippo-lit, deep breath in, out, smoke obscuring faces and whereabouts)
mine couldn’t didn’t wouldn’t drive, mine took a switch to me, mine made banana pudding, mine had an abortion, mine told stories to get us new school clothes, mine wasn’t scared of snakes, mine loved seconal, mine walked to the store in a house dress, mine packed bologna sandwiches, mine could yodel, mine married a one-legged man, mine slapped me, mine sewed a bull durham pouch into her bra, mine liked dandelion greens, started her period the day her brother died andthoughtshewasdyingtoo, mine liked to keep house and then she didn’t
IIl.
our mothers died
in bed
in a hospital
on a couch
on a bathroom floor
in a car, a green buick with fins longer almost longer
completely longer than a city block with plastic
seat covers that don’t absorb blood
in an old bathrobe
in uniform
in comfortable shoes the color of mud
after a day
a year
decades
half a century
looking back
forward
it is clear
we outlived
those mothers
Clamor 