Mother Country

By Elana Bell
My mother was a dead doll        I held her
                                                              hand in the land of the dead
                              and did not turn away

In the land where the animals made no sound
      where the cows stood at the empty lake and wept
            dry tears and the deer waited by the long stalks of dead grass
                 and everything whitened in the heat I did not
       turn away from my mother
                      her eyes empty of their water

*

My country: dark and flat like tar
       you could drown in

dark as night with no moon
     a lake with no bottom: nowhere to rest
              and full of the bones of beasts no one knows the names of

*

The distance between our countries sang

The distance between us a song
      played on the strings of a great instrument
               we do not see but know is there

like the invisible particles that make up all matter
      even the breath
             even the breath fogging the glass behind which my mother waits

the air suspended between us: no matter the distance

Copyright Credit: Elana Bell, "Mother Country" from Mother Country.  Copyright © 2020 by Elana Bell.  Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.
Source: Mother Country (BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org, 2020)