My Mother
She is bent at the waist at a west coast aquarium,
reclined in the daylight of Brooklyn, sober in her role
as a witness to the state, she is dancing at the club
on public television. She sinks her nails into my neck
at the police station, when I am caught stealing lip balm
from the pharmacy, she is photographed on a rooftop
in her wedding gown—her composure is sealed,
her breasts are buttoned down. My mother secures things
between her teeth, is released from the treatment center,
she is moving ahead. Some people paid for this, she said.
She reads pamphlets on taxation, makes declarations,
wears leather pants and legwarmers, a copper lipstick
on her mouth. Her brown hair is blown out. She stands
at the refrigerator, posing beside a bar, reaching
for the mints in her imaginary purse. My mother
is the body that turned the car onto Lombard Street,
taking off from a short stretch of abstinence.
She keeps her cash in small stacks on the counter.
This is our hand to mouth house. She laughs it off.
Kirsten Andersen’s poetry most recently appears in Tin House, Court Green, and Crab Orchard Review. A former Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford University, she lives on Cape Cod.
Lipstick painting by Jean Hildebrant
