Wing and a prayer.
We cannot sleep. There is nobody home. Except for us. Mother has posed and redressed us again: an age she was — or some of the ages Mother has been. We are as she has made us, more and less.
Features, not substance.
Bones.
Paste.
Mother says, “Look.” She says, “Look at the light.”
We are looking at feet.
An aisle is swaying. Rugs ruck up. Again, again, she sings off-pitch, our mother does: a crack in the alto, strings unstrung. It is the hand that is unholdable. Mother drops a syllable, an octave, bags, a delicate matter; breaks a sweat. She disidentifies us. It is dollars to donuts. Dust to dust. The fathers are buried: hers, ours. Bread and roast and cake again, release and reunion — who wants more? We lick our plates.
Mother, untethered, will travel, she says, pretty please: La, la. The gifts she will bring us — wrapped, undone. An empire waits.
A vessel has burst.
We cannot look. We cannot but look.
Men are in the yard again. The body of Mother. A foregone conclusion, Mother would say. The heart is a pump. In the end, it quits.
I will speak for myself: There is no end.
I am calling and calling.
The candles are lit.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
These acknowledgments could go on longer than my stories, but in particular, I would like to express my gratitude to Melanie Jackson, to the Dzanc crew — Dan Wickett (arguably the hardest working man in indie publishing), Steve Gillis, Mary Gillis and Steven Seighman, to Marc Chenetier, Monica Manolescu-Oancea and the Observatoire de Litterature Amercaine at the University of Paris for encouragement and incitement when it was much needed, to Gordon Lish, to Terese Svoboda and to Diane Williams. Finally and always, to Mike Evers and our sons, Brendan and Sean. Hey, Sean — thanks for the cover drawing.