MOM (for Mother's Day 2014)

I loved
My mother,
Her graceful ways


Shone like her often
Smiling hazel eyes,
Her playfulness blazed


Red and flowing like
Her thick wavy hair.


She conjured the cozy
Welcoming smells of
Warm snickerdoodles


As we arrived eagerly
Through the back door into
Her kitchen after school


And tasted simmering bubbling
Spaghetti sauce which eased


Our confused lives made up
Of equal parts joy and fear,
Lives filled with undigested


Evenings pierced through by
Tense snarls, humiliating sneers
And our father's wild eyes


Like a mad junkyard dog
Smashing the easy grins,
Tender flesh and comfort of
Those fragrant dinners,


The menu of homemade marinara
Ladled plentifully over pasta
Al dente and redolent,


Romaine salad with oily
Lemon garlic dressing
And then those perfect


Cinnamon tinged cookies
Hot out of her oven as
The five of us all


Now blasted and bleeding,
Souls singed black from our
Father’s feral rages, those


Nightly volcanoes foaming
With inexplicable terrifying
Eruptions--as real as her


Loving desires to make a
True home for us were his


Unconscious menacing impulses
Transforming our mom’s good
Hearted lively beauty into


A plain mute wooden chair:
And her four children,


Her saplings of pride and joy,
Into frozen witnesses of this
Familial crime.