Madonna and Child

By Rafael Campo b. 1964 Rafael Campo

By menopause, it’s not just estrogen

my mother lacks. She’s lost her eldest son—

that’s me, the one who’s queer—the doctor who

once made her very proud. These days, I do

my own wash when I’m home, I cook for her

so she can take a break from all the chores

she now refuses to assign to me.

She sits, half-watching Ricki through her tea’s

thin steam, her squint of disapproval more

denial than it is disgust. She hears

much better than she sees—it’s easier

to keep out vision than it is to clear

the air of sounds—and yet I know it’s age

that stultifies her senses too. Enraged

because she’s lost so much, I understand

why suddenly she looks so stunned

as from the television: “. . . Bitch, she stole

my boyfriend, my own mother did! . . .” I fold

a towel noiselessly. I know she thinks

it’s garbage, sinful, crap—just as she thinks

that taking estrogen in pills is not

what God intended, no matter what

the doctors say; or that I’m gay is plain

unnatural, she can’t endure such pain.

The oven timer rings. The cookies that

I’ve baked are done. I’ll make another batch

though she won’t touch them: given up for Lent.

My mother’s love. I wonder where it went.

Source: Diva (Duke University Press, 1999)

Biography

In interviews Rafael Campo has called himself “a mutt, a mongrel, a kind of happy monster,” referring to the disparate professional and personal identities he has learned to negotiate. Born in Dover, New Jersey in 1964 to Cuban and Italian parents, Campo attended Amherst College and Harvard Medical School. A poet and physician, Campo practices internal medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical . . .

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