Wednesday, May 8, 2013

imitation 3


Mom's By: Lauren Jernberg

Making promises they can't keep. For you,
I’ll do anything. But that’s not true. You
Won't want to help me with everything.
I will need help and will ask you to do
chores but you will just whine and say that
this is dumb, or you are always stuck with
these chores and it’s not fair. But I will always
understand what you mean when you get mad.
It is your way of telling me your feelings.
When you get frustrated or mad at me
You say that you love and care about me.
And I do the same thing to you. When I
Tell you to weed the garden, I am
Saying that I appreciate your help.
When I yell at you for doing something
It means that I care about the choices
You make. And all the nagging is part of
What the job entails. I care about what
You do with your life. I don’t want it thrown
To the lions or lost in a world of
Hurt like a bird with no home and nowhere
To go. I am to take care of you. We
Help each other with everything whether we
Like it or not. We hold each other up
Through the storms and are a shoulder to lean
On when you run out of breath laughing. We
Are friends by blood. Stepping in synch with each
Other. We may fight but there is no one
else I would rather be with thank you for
everything you mean the world to me.

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Women like me By: Wendy Rose

making promises they can’t keep.
For you, Grandmother, I said I would pull
each invading burr and thistle from your skin,
cut out the dizzy brittle eucalypt,
take from the ground the dark oily poison–
all to restore you happy and proud,
the whole of you transformed
and bursting into tomorrow.
           But where do I cut first?
Where should I begin to pull?
Should it be the Russian thistle
down the hill where backhoes
have bitten? Or African senecio
or tumbleweed bouncing
above the wind? Or the middle finger
of my right hand? Or my left eye
or the other one? Or a slice
from the small of my back, a slab of fat
from my thigh? I am broken
as much as any native ground,
my roots tap a thousand migrations.
My daughters were never born, I am
as much the invader as the native,
as much the last day of life as the first.
I presumed you to be as bitter as me,
to tremble and rage against alien weight.
Who should blossom? Who should receive pollen?
Who should be rooted, who pruned,
who watered, who picked?
Should I feed the white-faced cattle
who wait for the death train to come
or comb the wild seeds from their tails?
Who should return across the sea
or the Bering Strait or the world before this one
or the Mother Ground? Who should go screaming
to some other planet, burn up or melt
in a distant sun? Who should be healed
and who hurt? Who should dry
under summer’s white sky, who should shrivel
at the first sign of drought? Who should be remembered?
Who should be the sterile chimera of earth and of another place,
alien with a native face,
native with an alien face?

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