Inside My Mother’s Ring
Smooth like her face, an owl of beginnings
it stayed on her finger the last six-month road
like rain from a tree, a dream wrestling
as they turned her body over in the washing
as if she could mend, the gold to re-mold
like her red face and tears at my wedding
worn on her right hand, but still the bond
my father inside the circle.
They said take it off before it falls off,
take it off before it’s stolen.
I’m back from journeys and there’s no one to call
asking, can I be a daughter now?
Smooth like her face, an owl of beginnings,
rain from a tree, the ring a dream wrestling.
.
His Bag of Peanuts
I stare at the Hostess pastries and my father says yes
to the coconut and red icing enclosing light white cake
and layers of red ooze.
He comes away with salted peanuts and as we walk back to his office
I admire his supple leather shoes, brown with tiny decorative holes,
tongue hanging flat.
What stories do we tell each other, he who counsels my brother and me,
my heart beating like a tiny bird every time
I take tests of psychology.
Mother wants to escape from molten lava,
my brother a red fire, arms round
before softball.
My father stands at the sink scrubbing dishes clean, early morning
before chin hairs shorn, and at night when the hallway darkens,
the alarm box glows blurry numbers.
I can’t step into his voice, raised on a warm day, can’t see past
the stories he tells, can’t step into his bag of peanuts, greasy and salted
and what they knew about him.
BIO
Laurel Benjamin has poetry forthcoming in Lily Poetry Review. Find her work in Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal, California Quarterly, The Midway Review, Mac Queens Quinterly, Wild Roof Journal, Tiny Seed, and more.She is a finalist forEkphrastic Review’s Bird Watching Challenge, an honorable mention in Oregon Poetry Association’s contest, long-listed in Sunspot Literary Journal.Affiliated with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and the Port Townsend Writers, she holds an MFA from Mills College and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. More at https://thebadgerpress.blogspot.com
