D.O. Moore
Mother’s Day Visitor
My hours hover in abeyance—not the hummingbird suspended
in a C before my window’s trumpet-flower feeder. Instead
your pause, assessing me. You, turquoise purse and heels,
waiting for me to sleep or at least consent to lemon Jell-O
when I’d prefer ice cream, to this Home when that spa in Gibraltar
would do better. Even one of those tin-wall motels on Route 3.
On Tupper Lake in George’s sloop you were just six but already
too refined to skinny dip. And me? Within the water’s glistening
I laughed and splashed you, prim on the deck in the paper
crown you’d made in school. How fitting that you found a way
to bottle me—this bed and its levers, call button taped to my arm,
monitor or machine at every outlet. But I smell your impatience:
these eyes that won’t close, tendons that won’t still, heart pumping
like a plucked guitar, reverberating, amplifying, insisting.
D.O. Moore is poet, novelist, and translator living in Hyattsville, Maryland. Moore’s poetry has appeared in places such as Barrow Street, Beloit Poetry Journal, and RHINO, among others. Moore’s translations of fiction and poetry have appeared in multiple literary journals. Moore holds a doctorate in English from the University of Louisiana. Moore’s work is available at domoorewriting.com.