Home Economics
When she was ten, child of wartime
my mother trudged
seventy miles with my gram
to Cabanatuan, one skinny carabao
pulling the cart carrying everything, filled with nothing
but a small pot and wooden spoon, half sack
of rice, some dried monggo beans, bombs whumping
from the Manila they fled, my mother
stopping to pluck coconuts from trees high above her head
dashing them open
knifing milky sweetness.
When I was ten, my mother said make two fists
and open your arms wide then draped soft
elastic corners of a fitted queen atop knuckles lifted
like prayer, pink cotton clusters of pansies shielding
un-blossomed breasts. Now bring your hands together
she said, guiding my right wrist to downward curl, fabric cupola tumbling
onto my still clenched left. Fists tight like I was being readied
to fight but she instead instructed do the same with the other corners.
Four fabric gables became two then one, an even line
finale’ed into tidy tight square; I asked why
we didn’t fold the sheet together, and she said:
for when you are alone.
…..
This poem is from the chapbook Family as Celestial Body by Patty Ware (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/family-as-celestial-body-by-patty-ware/
Patty Ware grew up in a large, bi-cultural family whose influences heavily shaped the adult she became. Much of her writing centers on relationships, whose beauty and maddening complexity inform her pursuit of the still center. Her poems have appeared in Cirque, Gyroscope Review, Literary Mama and Slippery Elm. This is her first collection.
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