Ostrich Woman
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When I said I could not see herostrich legs, stock-still and raw-bonedunder her blanket, her grayed tangly hair,
her chapped lips, the gummy sleepsmeared in the corner of her eyes,nor hear urine running out of her,
nor the clatter of dusty shuttered blinds,nor millet worms twistingthrough the flour, no dented cans
dribbling soup or creamed cornon her kitchen floor, no misplaced diaper,no burnt corn meal grains floating in black oil,
how the rotted stairs to my childhoodbedroom sagged, how each door creakedand hung through their open and slam, the letters
about aid and care and rejection of pay,so much mail, so many envelopes,the piles of things in the dim living room
in front of her stained love seat,the cheap extension cords runningfrom the neighbor’s fence,a soiled bathroom and buckets, a crippled wing
I mean a crippled wheel chairI mean my mother, her voiceI mean her walking, her dancing. [End Page 258]
NANDI COMER has been a fellow at the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Cave Canem, Vermont Studio Center, and Virginia Center for the Arts. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in To Light a Fire: 20 Years with the InsideOut Literary Arts Project (Wayne State University Press, 2014), Detroit Anthology (Rust Belt Chic Press, 2014), Crab Orchard Review, Green Mountains Review, Pluck!, Prairie Schooner, and Southern Indiana Review. She is a 2016 recipient of a Detroit Write A House award.
