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?