Michael Mark: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Visiting Her in Queens Is More Enlightening than a Month in a Monastery in Tibet

 

For the fourth time my mother

asks, “How many children

do you have?” I’m beginning

 

to believe my answer,

“Two, Mom,” is wrong. Maybe

the lesson is they are not mine, 

 

not owned by me, and 

she is teaching me about

my relationship with her. 

 

I wash my dish and hers. 

She washes them again. I ask why.

She asks why I care.

 

Before bed she unlocks and opens

the front door. While she sleeps

I close and lock it. She gets up. Unlocks it.

 

“What I have no one wants,” she says.

I nod. She nods.

Are we agreeing?

 

My shrunken guru says she was up all night

preparing a salad for my breakfast.

She serves me an onion.

 

I want her to make French toast

for me like she used to. 

I want to tell her about my pain,

 

and I want her to make it go away.

I want the present to be as good as

the past she does not remember.

 

I toast white bread for her, butter it,

cut it in half. I eat a piece of onion. 

She asks me why I’m crying.

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Michael Mark is the author of the chapbook Visiting Her in Queens is More Enlightening than a Month in a Monastery in Tibet, which won the 2022 Rattle Prize. His poems have appeared in Copper Nickel, The New York Times, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Sixth Finch, Southern Review, The Sun, and elsewhere. His two books of stories are Toba (Atheneum) and At the Hands of a Thief (Atheneum). [This poem originally appeared in The Sun.]

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              Attributed to Vincenzo Campi (1530-1591), Old Peasant Woman with a Distaff and Spindle

Comments

[Christine]

This poem is a conjuring spell for Grief. Beautiful Grief who reminds us we've loved.

[Eileen Reich]

Beautiful, tender poem. Wonderful artwork.

[Denise Duhameld]

I love this poem and I love Mark's chapbook! He is a poet of poignancy and exact imagery.

[Grace Cavalieri]

Oh the heart belongs to this magnificent poem. This perfect thing.
And I live every week for the art curated by T P WINCH.

[Terence Winch]

Grace: thank you for that compliment.

[Anne Harding Woodworth]

Tears. And I didn't even have an onion. Thank you.

[Clarinda]

What grace C said! That bite of onion—brings tears to my eyes too. This poem is an act of true grace. Thank you.

[lally]

another perfect poem and choice terence

[Terence Winch]

Michael: thank you (I knew you would like it).

[Patrick Clancy]

Once again, Terry, you make me think and feel, laugh and cry ....... all at the same time.

Thanks for this.

[Don Berger]

I love this poem's sustained focus on the action of the speaker and his mother, and how it's also blessed with the sudden appearance certain sudden striking and mysterious lines like "What I have no one wants," and "I want the present to be as good / as the past she does not remember," not to mention the reference to the guru, who's shrunken! It's a tough memory to capture well and Michael Mark does it for sure. Thanks Terence for showing us!

[Doug Pell]

Another great poem. And i agree the artwork you find is a delight to behold.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Don. "What I have no one wants"---my favorite line as well.

[Terence Winch]

Doug: thanks for that comment. 

[Terence Winch]

PJC: Thanks for the comment.

[Abbie Mulvihill]

Wow, this poem is so tragicomically relatable. It’s brilliant!

[Amy Gerstler]

Very cool poem. I love the bracing feeling at the end of being hit by the onion’s astringency and the resulting tears.

[Elinor Nauen]

Whoa! Wow! This is great in all the ways that everyone has been saying. Thank you, Michael Mark, for the poem & Terence for giving us so much heart week after week.

[Terence Winch]

Thank you, Elinor, for the comment.

[Susan Campbell]

This is wonderful!

[Gordon Kippola]

A beautifully insightful poem of loss, and the joy of what may still be discovered in this late adult relationship of a mother and son. Simple, specific, and powerful images that invite us to linger. Michael Mark’s chapbook is a revelation, and highly recommended. I also echo the praise of everyone commenting on the spot-on painting selected to accompany the poem.

[Phyllis Rosenzweig]

Touching. Thank you.

[Edith Alter]

Such a beautiful, powerful poem. "My shrunken guru" kills me.

[Robin Raven]

What a gorgeous poem.

[K Lo]

So beautiful, and a powerful example of how universal the particular can be. Thank you for this!