Mother I went in the rose garden

In the middle of the night

To find the things I lost there

Mother I searched for you

For seven nights

And could not find you

They left your perfume everywhere

A kind of toying aspect

And scratched your picture

With their talons

I replaced it

Despite their anger

And still got up in the morning

To feed the babies

Their first meal

Mother I wore a lilac dress

And stepped through the thistle

The alligators had already overtaken

The endless landscape

Your body was somewhere there

And it was my job to bury it

But I couldn’t

In my head your voice rang out

With the strangest aroma

The gods had left you in the rose garden

Mother I went in before dawn to find you

I didn’t know they left

So many noxious animals

There to hurt me

Terrible fear upon terrible fear

Mother I was motherless

So I became myself finally

I wandered in the endless garden

To find something I had lost

When I finally gave up

Mother the roses they overtook me

I filled with vines and lead

And waited two hundred years

Mother I waited there forever

Searching and searching

Until they let you in again

Birth

Written and read by Dorothea Lasky

When I was born I didn’t cry

Instead they pulled me out a giant lifeless doll

And sat me on the glass table

All of the doctors ran

Eventually it was fine

When Hera was born

She looked like a clear bubble

Encasing a red lamb

I barely got to see her

As they raced her out of the room

And intubated her

When my son was born

They pulled him out of me

And the doctor came over

Hours later, my grizzle all over

Her smock and she said

It all turned out ok

I couldn’t move anything

Under my eyelids

Birth is everything they said it would be

And the death doulas also make

Their proclamations into the afternoon

Yes you see narcissism or the self

Is the gift of the mother

You might say that this is disgusting

And you’d be right

But so is everything

So are you

So is life

So look deep into the mirror now

My beloved

Aren’t you the happy genius

Of your little household

Without art we’d all just be

Swimming upstream with the tax collector

So look deep into that slick surface

So much had to die to put you there

It’s not wrong to respect yourself

That person that you’ll always be

Food for Babies

Written and read by Dorothea Lasky

Oranges and hot chocolate

And mittens

Cookie milk

Eggs both scrambled and over easy

English muffins with butter

And fruit tape

Apple juice by the gallon

Bacon and grilled cheese

Pizza and brussels sprouts

String beans and rotisserie chicken

Fish, or more specifically, salmon

And candy bags that were hidden

With chocolate coins

And watermelon lollipops

Spinach and tomato puffs

Puffs seeped in broth

Steak and hamburgers

Cheeseburgers with ketchup

Cheeseburgers without ketchup

Burgers without ketchup

French fries

French fries without ketchup

Apples and cheese

Eggrolls and spring rolls

Orange juice and water

Water from the Berkey

And water from the tap

Cucumbers without the peel

Salted on English muffins

Apple sauce

Ice cream cake on birthdays

It’s so sweet

Now I’ll have a nightmare

Sweet green cake

I baked it for you on your birthday

Clean up your toys

I fucking asked you to do it

The oranges are too sweet

They are too sour

The clementines are rotten

The clementines have a thick film of mold

Growing from their skin

Strawberries that only last a day

Even in the refrigerator

Going to sleep too late

I stuffed my face

I am throwing up now

I am throwing up into the tub

Get me a show

I had an accident

I had an accident in my bed

I am tired tuck me in

It’s cold in here

The water is cold

The water is too hot

Turn down the water

I won’t get in that cold water

Where are the cookies

I will eat the gummy bunnies

Where is my dinner

Give me my French Fries

If you don’t eat your dinner

You can’t have dessert

If you don’t clean up your toys

You can’t have dessert

I fucking asked you to do it

School is in ten minutes

If you get too many lates

You will have to repeat again

If you don’t finish this homework

Your teachers will be angry

Do you want to make

Your teachers angry

Oranges and hot chocolate

The oranges are rotten

Grilled cheese on sourdough toast

With lots of butter

I see you like ketchup on eggs

I said for you to do it

I am crying

Why aren’t you in here

I am scared you will die

I am so sorry I yelled

I am just so tired

I fucking told you to do it

I am tired

So tired

Even I can’t comprehend how

Tired I am

Orange juice on toast

Cookie milk on butter

Pizza is in the oven

I mashed the fish into the brussels sprouts

The green beans are too spicy

I don’t like these noodles

Take the green things off of the noodles

The green things!

Will you die

When you go to the hospital

I fucking told you to do it

I fucking told you to do it

Do it

Do it

Do it

I dare you

The Lodge at Mount Rainier

Written and read by Dorothea Lasky

On the mount, a sunny day

The poems will never be food

The soul of poetry is the mother soul

All the babies who’ve been cut

All the mothers who’ve been cut

All the sailors taken from their mothers

All the babies cut from their mothers

This is the thing they fight for:

A blue sky

Silence!

You’ll never be food for anyone

Your poems will toil and toil for no reason

All the babies who’ve been taken

Screaming from their mothers

Out into the lawn

To scream the greenest scream

The silent poems

Are the soul of poetry

Not the baby screaming

Not the person screaming on the hill

On the mount, the most worn down flower

Its frost a fire

In the fire-frost I am its mother

Flower mother don’t go

The soul of poetry is on the mountain

The soul of mothers is the poem

That goes on forever, never said

The mother soul is a flower

Flowers say nothing

To the poems that are its food

Mother, poetry is the food of being

The words will never be poems

The poems won’t fight they will be quiet

Quiet tiny flowers are stars

The only breath of flowers the poems

That scream into the lawn

The poems are always

Taken from their mothers too soon