First Nursing Home Dream
- First Nursing Home Dream
This is the secondary revision. A large windowto the ocean.
(I wanted to finish the bookabout my motherin an idyllic setting.)
This is the instant the wave curls towards the windowand the computer quietly trembles.
I say to my mother: I'm taking you upstairsto be with your husband. Mother,
I'm wheeling you awayfrom the storm.
But she has forgotten what husbandsare for. I tell her they are to roll towelsunder the door.
(We eat squid. We've overcooked them to rubber.I am good at interpreting all sorts of figures.
In the dream the squid bounces back hysterically largerand though you can sign your nameI try to sign it for you.) [End Page 75]
The sky darkens and the town scrambles to empty. I knowthis is my last chance to addfootnotes or a glossary.
Over the loudspeaker the absentee landlordoffers a helicopter.
"All the papers are in order."
But it's a trick: he's lured me to his officeto collect the rent. And what to dofor lack of wordsbut suffocate my son: this is what it feels liketo drown.
It was a summer rental for the wrong season.We've all taken on loversfor the wrong reason.
This is the revision that rhymes. This makes senseof time.
. . .
In real life everyone's breathingand for a penis I've a daughter.How did I swim and tan in the 80swithout forecasting this motherfucker? [End Page 76]
Rosa Alcalá is the author of a poetry collection, Undocumentaries, and two chapbooks, Some Maritime Disasters This Century and Undocumentary. She has also translated poetry by Cecilia Vicuña, Lourdes Vázquez, and Lila Zemborain, among others. Recent translations include Zemborain's Guardians of the Secret, and poems for The Oxford Book of Latin America Poetry. She teaches in the Department of Creative Writing and Bilingual MFA Program at the University of Texas at El Paso.
