Poem My Mother Doesn’t Want Right Now
my mother down the hall fast like a train
or a bus blurting away her sprint turned
to tears:—and then into drops
of shit a trail of shit and she
is a paper icon is bread and dirt
crumbling in the murderous hands of the hall
I try to scrub fast fast as my mother’s leap
into the bathroom and into embarrassment—:
soiled gown closed door tears to
the ceiling thudding between the fan blades
am I right saying nothing letting this slide
off the now clean tile pine disinfecting
the moment am I right as I quietly wash her
clothes erasing the residue of what age is doing to her
F. Douglas Brown is the author of Zero to Three (University of Georgia Press 2014), recipient of the 2013 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. He also co-authored with poet Geffrey Davis, Begotten (November 2016), a forthcoming chapbook of poetry from Upper Rubber Boot Books as part of URB’s Floodgate Poetry series. Mr. Brown, teaches English at Loyola High School of Los Angeles, and is both a Cave Canem and Kundiman fellow. When he is not teaching, writing or with his two children, Isaiah and Olivia, he is busy DJing in the greater Los Angeles area.