0 68 - TheMichigan Daily Weekend, etc. Magaine -Thursday, March 9, 2000 6 0 Sestina For My Mother The Michigan Daily - Weekend, etc. Magazin Assuming he was here A tinfoil voice asks me to say a poem. Next door, an EKG chirps rhythmically. One hand is not twitching, h nehand clutches tissues splotched with black. It is a lucid request, her first all afternoon, reminds of what's caught in the teeth of psychosis. by MichaelLombardo I derail by memory's closing clutches, hear that voice drowne in static, "psychosis" was unsaid, my brother's words terribly lucid still, like something out of a Ted Hughes poem: Mom took some pills. Sobs broke in, rhythmically. He was a baby before, is not reminded of a towel, a knife, a note. Reminder shot me into the car that groaned and clutched hard on the highway, while I rhythmically spun panicked pictures with wheels. Psychosis is all molars, but sharp at first. A poem of shocked sestets, caesuras of lucidity. She asks again for a poem. I'm lucid, forget the doctors! Her eyes remind me of tarpits: dark, bubbling. There's a poem. I don't see paper here, still my hand clutches a smuggled ballpoint (no "sharps" in the Psych Ward). A guard jingles his keys rhythmically. 1 am stroking her forehead rhythmically, maybe for hours. If it were pellucid I could see the snarled net of psychosis, a Gordian convergence. Reminder slips by in a salty coat. She clutches at her thin blanket as I say her poem: Stars are always lucid. Let their rhythmic pulse remind of years penciled on drywall, of our hands clutching my psychotic red kite, scribbling the sky with poems. West Side Book Shop since 1975 Used & Rare Books Bought & Sold 113 W. Liberty (1/2 block W. of Main St.) 995-1891 THANKS AND CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE FINE WRITERS WHO SUBMITED THEIR WORK. WE HOPE YOU ALL KEEP WRITING* - FROM JEFF AND TOYIN I flipped up the pull of the zipper on my teal, insulation-thick winter coat and pulled it into my mouth. The metallic taste filled my mouth. I jammed my thumbs against the pink cuffs and twisted my legs together under the metal chair with the tan seat. I looked at my mom. She was watching the doorway where my father stood. I looked at my dad. He turned around and looked at my mother. He told her something, but I couldn't hear the words his eyes spoke. He moved like someone had taken a bat and halved each bone in his body. He sat next to my mother. She reached over and rubbed the spine between his angel's wings. He rest- ed his broken elbows on his shattered knees and laid his face down in the bowl his chapped hands formed. A squeaky sob escaped from his tightly shut mouth. I kicked my legs from beneath the square seat. I caught a piece of my tongue between the zipper pull and my lower two front teeth and bit down. Blood, saliva and metal coated my taste buds as my brown eyes focused on the salty dis- charge covering my father's sagging cheeks. (He had dragged his face out of his hands and was now resting it on the tips of his fingers.) My mother became his mother. Her voice rose to the pitch she used the day I dragged my bike and myself into the yard, covered with blood. Blood, saliva, and a hot pink ten-speed. Grandma walked across the waiting room and sat down. She looked worried, and mildly confused. And angry. She sat down, folding and refolding her hands that rested on her belly. His lungs were filling with fluid. He couldn't breathe. That's what they told me. He'd had another stroke and it didn't look like he was going to pull through. I didn't want to see. A few years earlier I had seen all the tubes. He had looked so pale against the white sheets in the glow of the fluorescent lights. Lying in that bed, he looked like jello. Clear jello. I was relieved that my mother didn't tell me to kiss him when we left that day. My uncle flew in from Texas. My aunt arrived from Chicago. My grandfather moved out of intensive care. My brother and I could go see him. My dad asked me if I wanted to go in with them. I lowered my eyes -and shook my head. Later, he asked me why I decided not to see my grandpa for the last time. I told him I wanted to remember him as alive, not dying. I did not tell him I was afraid of clear jetlo. I was three years old. The slaps of my white shoes were lost in the layers of soft grass. My pink dress bobbed up and down in time with the golden curls that sprouted from my head. I ran around the corner and into the knee of my grandfa- ther. He scooped me up, laughing, and carried me to the picnic table. He stood straight. He walked. It's not true. I made up that memory. I never owned a pink dress. But he did stand straight when I was three years old. He didn't hide his left arm under a gray cardigan. That's the way I'll remember him. The way I can't remember. Once a month, on Sunday, after church, we drove to Albion to visit my grandfather in the nursing home. My brother and I usually got bored. I don't remember what my parents talked about with grandpa because I usually wasn't paying attention. If the weather was nice, we would take grandpa for a walk. We usually stuck to the parking lot because the sidewalk was uneven. Grandpa always cheered up when we went for a walk. We went for a walk, but he couldn't walk. Sometimes my brother and I would take turns pushing his chair. As a nine- year-old I was convinced my arms were superhuman, because, skinny as they were, they could move a full-grown man. Astonishing. One day, grandpa couldn't figure out who we were. He asked grandma where by Emily Mather their children were. I wonder if my dad cried that night. I wonder if my dad ever cried. Once he told me that grandpa liked me because he thought I was Aunt Linda. Apparently, Aunt Linda didn't get along so well with her father, and since I was a little girl ... who smiled at him and kissed him when we left ... I became the little girl who forgave him. The little girl who loved him. Maybe my little girl will become my father's Emily. My grandfather had his last stroke' Christmas Day. A little after midnight, on the edge of a new year, my father picked up the phone and learned that grandpa: had died. He left. My brother crept down the hall and hesitated, calling gently before he pushed open the door that was open a crack. My mother told him come in, sit on the bed, yes, grandpa died. I lay on my bed; eyes open wide, staring at a ceiling I couldn't see. I flipped over and! stuffed my face in my pillow, strangling the sobs that threatened to bring my par- ents into my room. Ten years old, I insist- ed on dealing with the first shell of a human left behind after the soul departed alone. Death would not be so horrible if we didn't have to see what was left behind. His body's still here, where did he go? Heaven? Hell? Nowhere? If he didn't really leave, then why doesn't he move anymore? Who shut his mouth, closed his eyes? Maybe all he ever was was clear jello. I'm looking at a photo that was taken at the funeral. I wore a purple sweater. And a smile. You can almost see every -: ERefeliv'eryf fal t 661553 THIS SUMNv IN NEW~ L I... ..i $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ EasyStudnt Jbs4 Flexile Hurs! $7 pe hou + bnuse ay tdnt Jobs www.telefund.umich.edu 1 Two sessions: June 5-July 13/July 17-August 24 Day, evening, and weekend undergraduate and graduate courses Low tuition for visiting students: Undergraduare: NYS residents $160/credit; nonresidents $325/credit Giraduate: NYS reid~ ents $18 5/c~redt EXPLORE EARN COL I Baruch College/The City University of New York 17 Lexington Avenue (a