The Old Man's Mother
When, it isn't often,
the old man thinks of his mother,
he sees her in a house dress,
belly bulging with diverticulitis,
grey hair so thin her scalp shows through,
arms and hands speckled with petechiae;
on the bathroom sink her pink and white
uppers and lowers are leering in a cup, but just now,
as he pulled underpants from his highest drawer,
he was stopped in place by her portrait;
a photograph which had sat on his dresser
for many years. She was twenty-one
and beautiful. The photographer's stamp
reads Lundgrin Studios 1926, Conshohocken, PA.
Her brown hair is bobbed, her eyes green,
her face is Mary Pickford's with a little softening.
Holding the picture up, the old man fell in.
On the corner of Fayette Street and 10th Avenue,
fresh from the photographer, his mother,
redolent of Jasmin de Coryse and Fels Naphtha,
cloche barely hiding her bob,
raises one white calf playfully,
leans laughing into his father.
Her breasts are twin provocations.
Leaping free, she spins away,
slipping between
an ice wagon and a truck heaped
with Pennsylvania coal.
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