Portrait of My Mother with Sailor Mouth, and: Pickup, and: "To Speak of Woe"

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Portrait of My Mother with Sailor Mouth, and: Pickup, and: "To Speak of Woe" Erin Redfern (bio) Portrait of My Mother with Sailor Mouth Her gorgeous cursing woke my greed for wordsstretched on rhythm's rack. GOD DAMN SON-of-a-BITCH!Spondee, choriamb—towel she wrung and snappedat whatever bother raised its mole-blind head.Stubbed toes, stubborn lids invoked the creticwhip of JE-sus H FUCK-ing CHRIST. She sworein manual transmission, like she drove.Tempo of my brain, breath, lines. Let otherswrite in auto-iambic. I still hear herthumb-ball drumming the steering wheel throughanother morning carpool. Was a timeshe'd buckle me in the car seat and we'd sing"You Are My Sunshine" in a round. So shegave me, too, my first canon, first metaphor. [End Page 142] Pickup To play at all, I had to get to the Central Ybefore the big gym opened. I'd be last chosen,the girl no guy wanted to guard. I sympathized— if he shut me down, he looked like a jerk;if he got beat, he looked weak. But I wanted to play,I could shoot, I could pass, and I could set a mean pick. And if he forgot and bodied up or checked my hiphard, this was victory. Days were blue-and-grayplaid skirts at the Sisters of the Presentation High School. The only boys I knew were these men pushingthe small of my back, pressing their thighs against minein the key, leaning wide shoulders into me. Winners stayed, and there were nights I got to run the courtuntil closing. If we lost, I'd shoot at the side hoop with the rest,hoping to play next, or the one after. Except the night I waited with Eddie at his stop just outside.The gym's open doors breathed into the dusk,and the kiss smelled of varnish and sweat, sounded like basketballs thumping hardwood and clangingoff rims. I'd been thinking why not, nowI can stop wondering what a kiss feels like, then felt the slick silk of his mouth and tongue.And for all this boy-kiss was strange, I foundI already knew what it taught, the gentleness of men who passed the ball when I had a clear shot,who called their own fouls, who picked me to play. [End Page 143] After the bus pulled away, I practiced free throws, floaters, drives until the desk clerkkicked us out and locked the gym from inside,where the court went quiet and the big halide lamps spilled their afterglow up there in the dark. [End Page 144] "To Speak of Woe" Divorcing after thirty years, my father toldme there had been another child, onemy mother wanted but he would not let her keep. I'm chipped from his block, cast in his mold.Mine his hands, his words—though we need noneto sense our separate thoughts. Did she weep? Was she alone? He didn't know. So I holdher secret, the (un)Wanted Daughter, extrusionof bone loneliness who would have interceded, unorphaned us all. What's (re)injured / healedif I (don't) speak? Knowing is intrusion,their grief-body forced up through my seams. Years are passing. Quick, quicker.I was an only child. I had a sister. [End Page 145] Erin Redfern erin redfern's poems have recently appeared in Rattle, New Ohio Review, New World Writing, and The Massachusetts Review. She has served as poetry judge for the San Francisco Unified School District's Arts Festival and reader for Poetry Center San Jose's Caesura and DMQ Review. She teaches poetry classes online. www.erinredfern.net. Copyright © 2022 Erin Redfern