“Anti-Ghazal for Mother” by Emily Skov-Nielsen
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Anti-Ghazal for Mother” by Emily Skov-Nielsen.
Anti-Ghazal for Mother
By Emily Skov-Nielsen
Bald wound of a bedroom. The pit and the machines.
TV 24/7. Heat lightning. Sister Death next door.
My mind’s scrambled eggs, mother slurs through the phone.
Dealing in hocus-pocus, in pharmacopoeias of grief.
Scorched, sweltering. Dark forest honey.
Night rain, black arches, the nun moth.
Her wings span the city, kiss us goodnight with
gentle collapse, trailing into deep sutured sleep.
Basalt, mafic lava, mother has been weeping for centuries.
Rapidly cooling, hardening, her well-honed tactics.
Leading her flock of Aristotelian winter swallows
encased in clay, sinking into swamp.
Leaving us, always, for that underland.
Divinely absent, inconceivably benumbed.
Copyright © Emily Skov-Nielsen
Previously published in Grain.
Emily Skov-Nielsen is the author of The Knowing Animals (Brick Books), which was shortlisted for the 2021 ReLit award and The Fiddlehead Poetry Book Prize. She’s currently finishing her second manuscript amidst mothering and working as a librarian.
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