I posted the poem here quite some time ago. "Songs for Orphaned Mothers." Here it is again:
Songs for Orphaned
Mothers
Josephine Carubia
Song I
Do orphans make the best mothers or grandmothers?
Are they grateful for the scraps and just one solid man?
Do they raise loyal children who gather on Sunday
to eat their sustenance and witness
their amazement?
Will they muscle nothing, no, less than nothing,
into a noisy, fragrant kitchen full
of helping hands?
Does an orphan mother mourn?
Does she know the whole cloth of what she doesn’t know?
Where were you born?
When were you alone?
You came so far.
Did you find it here, what you lost?
Was it enough?
What is enough?
When is enough?
How is enough?
Who is enough?
Where is enough?
The map of you has few places marked.
Places called together
and places called alone.
Does being mother cancel being orphan?
How many stitches to hold it all together, but never quite repair?
Is it good enough?
Or could it possibly be beautiful?
I am making this song for you and all orphan mothers.
Song II
You were broken when they died, but the needs of others
fused your
bones into shapes and purposes.
Silent and hurt, you submit your dreams of home
to the required husband’s ambition.
Still a child, you bore a child with no mother of your own.
You fed the living children and the dead.
You hoarded scraps against the day of hardships beyond
the dry
charity of a suffering town.
The gabriel went over sea and under ground
to return
and leave, return and leave.
Return.
Still, not much was something familiar on your tongue.
Broken again, in the dark, shaken, soiled and sick,
holding
only wisps of once familiar penury
as
beautiful memory.
Meanwhile huddled children caring for children iterate
towards new
trajectories invisible on the shifting dim horizon.
Song III
You don’t smile toward the future—Why would you?
If you knew I was coming, would you smile?
Between that girl with a ribbon in her hair
And me, mistress
of comfort and machines,
A century of
burdens borne across vastness,
punctuated by rare moments of ease, if
not joy.
The
photographer’s moment,
a pause before the abyss.
You, however,
persisted,
stepping forward, despite the drag of
events,
toward this intersection of your hopes
and my thanks.
A century passes.
A faded photo surfaces.
Lines intersect.
I recognize you.
Your hand held
still and straight is my hand still.
Your wrist outgrowing its sleeve—
your stance
with weight on one foot—
Your face, the same and different.
All familiar; all family.
Girl!
One fancy dress over one heart.
Beating.
I remember your words for a full belly in dialect.
I remember the heavy bucket of soapy water up and down
the
building hallways and stairs, and I remember the mop.
I remember you calling “Sal-lee” up the dark shaft window by the sink.
Do you recognize me?
This is my hand at the end of your arm.
Song IV
This corner tells
the story of that time you cried.
Here you climbed
the hill just to find she was already gone.
This piece is for
when you waited,
and waited,
and waited.
But here you saw
a star streaking across the sky and thought
it was a sign of future joy.
This rough patch speaks volumes about harsh voices always
leaning against you.
Song V
She is not who you think she is: a fat old woman in a faded
dress
stepping from stove to sink to
table on swollen ankles.
Once she was an orphan girl, an island girl, almost
cinderella,
married at fifteen, but not living
the dream.
Not beautiful, but determined.
Sometimes looking out the window to the others bustling on
First Avenue.
Sometimes falling asleep in the
kitchen.
From discarded pieces and bits, mingled with tears, blood,
and love,
she generated hard-won wedges into
uncertain futures:
FAMILY.
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