We sit in a booth with red seats; what she calls a greasy-spoon joint,
but the jargon i've heard is "area of neutrality."
I smile to placate her, showing teeth the way you do with animals,
making your intentions as obvious as possible.
It's been eight months, but today the clock runs in nervous circles;
an hysterical gyre, a relentless tattoo, and my sister says a blithe thing or two,
about a dress; a book; the dreams she makes up on the spot.
My mother is small, hangdog, sober and watery, her creases ancient cuts in stone;
she wears a funeral of clothes, and her mother's diamond studs, drooping
like sad jokes from her rubbery ears.
We are a family of early-risers:
(we are of debutantes and cowgirls, actresses, lunatics, prisoners, alcoholics,
disappointed lovers, strong, noble, terrified women, a staircase of
dying ghosts bound into my DNA.)
Through the window I see damp socks and bottle caps
sadly hugging the gutter; the sidewalk's wet from street-cleaning.
The bleak sky's like a white sheet stretched tight,
and I'm cold so I hold my coffee in two hands.
My sister brings up World War II; lesbians; celebrities.
My mother nods.
Her eyes are rainy, her mouth a wan, red line.
I ask her if she's eaten but she says she's not hungry,
and we look at the eggs:
yellow and trembling aborted baby chickens
who never got to tell their mothers that they loved them,
never got to leave and say fuck off.
My sister brings up the weather, but I wish she wouldn't
because it's my mother who taught me to hate the sun.
2006
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