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Portrait of a Mother on the Eve of Spring Break
By: Tamra Plotnick
through the parlor window
I witness
my last umbilical issue
load her distilled yet spindly
wonder into a hired car
and stream away
trailing behind
a long buried yet noodling crevasse
an invisible emptiness threading my core
that she began spinning since her womb exit fifteen summers back
that holy filament hooked onto her suitcase wheels
stretching my hollowness
past prospect
I stand behind glass
these wafery walls of skin
vacant of her
glamour, grace, gall
this empty arc of bones
pressing against my own architecture
prayers, poems, partners
so as not to cave
under the weight of
values ill-instilled
quests unshared
talk too tacit
bonds unbound
like Demeter
I forfeit color and verve
with her departure
though blossom’s promise looms a day away
and the charge is to view flamboyantly all
till the return of my Persephone
I will
spring
break
Tamra Plotnick’s poetry and prose works have been published in many journals and anthologies, including: Serving House Journal; The Waiting Room Reader, Global City Review and The Coachella Review. Her book In the Zero of Sky, Poems will be released by Assure Press in 2021. She has performed her work in multimedia shows in New York City where she lives, dances, teaches high school, and malingers with friends and family.
Shambles 