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)