Roz heaps her famous baked apples
into Tupperware,
Charlotte presses me to deliver
whitefish salad on challah,
Jean offers chocolate biscotti
and I drive off for pizza, bagels,
a Subway tuna sandwich,
to entice my dying mother
to eat, eat.
Instead, she has me play the hostess,
serve coffee to her guests,
quarter the giant sub
and grant it piecemeal to the nurses.
For days she’s laughingly admitted that
what she could really go for
is a Coney Island hot dog
with mustard and sauerkraut.
I finally find the only Nathan’s
in West Palm Beach
and enter hospice bearing triumph
in a paper take-out bag.
She takes one bite
and asks,
“What flavor ice-cream is this?
Pineapple?”
Over dinner at the Jewish deli,
Jean tells me how as a girl
my mother would hoard her bus fare
so she could buy a Nathan’s hot dog.
She always got in trouble,
mustard stains on her blouse
giving her away.
I picture her now as that young girl
striding through Brooklyn Streets,
eating life.
Sandi Leibowitz is the author of three poetry collections: Ghost-Light, Eurydice Sings, and The Bone-Joiner. Her speculative poems have won second- and third-place Dwarf Stars, as well as nominations for the Elgin, Rhysling, Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net awards. She invites you to visit her at www.sandileibowitz.com (http://www.sandileibowitz.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment