Note from My Mother
- Note from My Mother
Let's talk aboutyour long-lost lion puppet,
the one true creatureyou could not live without.
Did you know I x-actoedthe grasslands of his mane
from the Sunday funnies?Did you know that his eyes
were not marbles at all?Did you know I pierced
a black-eyed pea with a needleand made it his nose?
Did you know we all live for a timeas creatures abandoned? Bring back
the ketchup bottle that you fittedwith a wig. Bring back the cocoons
noosed to the lid of a pickle jar;the eyelashed mouth
of the venus flytrap; the newtsand tadpoles; the wood tick, [End Page 506]
its perfume-bottle grave.Did you know we all live
all our lives with coins on our eyes?Did you know that your puppet
wasn't a lion at alluntil you called him a lion?
I made him no one creaturein particular; he was cloth
with a face, and his gumball eyeswere sweet when you licked them
and gone in a day. [End Page 507]
jeff hoffman's first book of poems, Journal of American Foreign Policy, won the New Issues Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the California Book Award. Recent poems have appeared in Drunken Boat and Ilanot Review. He lives in Los Angeles, where he works as a screenwriter.
