Those Sisters with Scissors poke holes in you
Cut out tomorrow dismember yesterday
Tangle your yarn til you don’t know who
you are or where
You lose the bathroom or it loses you
as if you hadn’t just been there
I show you down my brother’s
long corridor
past your mother’s final
self-portrait You wheel
your walker back to me your daughter
from California
I see me on the potty chair
you perched on the bathtub chanting
“spss spss spss spss”
You sit at table refuse your juice refuse
your tuna salad I hear your voice in my childhood
“Eat a little drink a little” “My voice?” you marvel
A sudden shift of light
Your gaze lights mine
“I wonder what you’ll write about me now”
For this moment you know me even here in Indiana
til the Shadow Sisters steal
your face from me O I regret
the half a continent between us I regret
I must leave you again You point
out the window into late autumn
Red leaves flame on the backyard maple
“Look how beautiful”
as if you hadn’t said that minutes ago
A sudden shift of light and I too
can see the tree as if
the Mother-Daughter circle still spins
As if those Scissor Sisters aren’t forever
lurking
