Two Poems by Ada Jenkins

Mother

~~~~

Mother, you’re so funny

with your sterile, marbled emotions,

smooth to the touch.

And your words that bleed out of your mouth,

like a pig going to the slaughter.

Mother, you’re so funny

with your hot cross bun eyes,

and raisin mouth, round and puckered,

shriveled to silence like a piece of dead skin.

You’re so funny

With your numb white fingers

pressing,

always pressing,

down,

like a pen in my head.

But I’m not laughing anymore.

I’ve stopped laughing.

~~~

Snowflakes

~~~

Snowflakes:

light, innocent, soft.

Newborn babies falling from the sky.

Landing, dissolving

wherever chance takes them:

subjected to nature's laws.

Silent;

the perfect offspring,

seen but never heard.

Sculpted ice babies,

it’s a shame you have to melt,

disintegrate.

It will be a slow process,

like a snake shedding its skin

or a caterpillar: hot and sticky,

struggling in its own secretions,

waiting to emerge

Perfect.

A drowning shadow in new light.

Slow for you,

but quick for us

as we watch in safety:

outsiders to your snow globe.

Dislocated from you

and your sadness;

rejections and bitter disappointments.

Your chiseled faces

dissolve together,

disappearing,

mutilated by the sun.

Thawed by the same bony fist

that waits for us all to melt.  

~~

--Ada Jenkins