G. J. Sanford
What I Don’t Know (About My Mother)
I don’t know if she liked meat—
blackened, or the blood
of medium-rare. I don’t know how she felt
about avocados,
whether she revered them as I do
or reeled from the reek
of them. I don’t know her favorite
animal, but I know
she had a plush blanket upon which
was pictured the howling head
of a white wolf. I will never know
her fantasies,
but she collected tiny pewter wizards,
each of them clutching a stone
of glass. Did she carry them out of her
youth? Did they bring her
comfort during the long dull nights,
when the passages
of her brain must have been stretched
into shapes terrifying
and unfamiliar? What did she think
about choirs
of angels? And when she heard their arias
ringing in her ears,
did she walk taller feeling blessed
by some god
or did she think to see a therapist—
or just medicate
the only way she knew how? I want to know
what she thought of
that night she swallowed stolen fire
one last time,
what harsh tune was trapped
in her head when she rid herself finally
of herself. I want to know if the echo of that tune
is born again in my brain,
withering away the forest of my resistance.
Will I, like her,
deny the coincidence of life, encompass,
in the end, a misgiving?
G. J. Sanford is a queer poet and writer birthed and corrupted in Nevada’s high desert. Their work has appeared in Lady/Liberty/Lit, River Styx, Frontier Poetry, december, and others. They are, with writer Logan Seidl, co-editor of the Vitni Review.
