To Enter My Mother’s House, and: How to Make Him Stay
Rent from DeepDyve- To Enter My Mother’s House, and: How to Make Him Stay
To Enter My Mother’s House
The Heron god created daughteron the last day. Not knowingwhat to do with the longingleft over from creation, he poured itinto her open mouth, still warmand echoing with earth.
To enter my mother’s houseI must walk backward withsmoke in my mouth.
To pass through the keyholeI must become a spoutof water, a single hairfrom an ocelot’s back.
I must go back thirty yearsto recreate myself, carvemy face on the unburnt tipof a match, strike my teeththrice against her name.
The daughter is always hungry,walking backward through lockeddoors, breaking her teeth onteacups and unasked questions. [End Page 78]
In my mother’s house,blue as bruise and dryas tinder, there are roomsI am too tall to enter.
I must make myself smalland light as a bee, suspendmyself among the dust motesand droplets, hum and fidgetamong the noiseless things.I must not disturb the dishesin the sink, tread softly roundthe sunken bed.
If the daughter, milk-softand heavy with eggdoes not re-enter the houseof her mother, she will give birthto a siege of night herons.They will be born ravenous,eat the heart from her bodybefore they can walk.
To re-enter my mother’s houseI must walk backward cloakedin purple, the colour of hurt.
I must never ask about my birth.
How to Make Him Stay
Go into your garden at nightAnd whisper his true names. [End Page 79] The plants that cry out in ecstasywill be the ones you must pick.Cut the softest jointswith your best knife,take the traitorous shootsinto the kitchenand drown them.
Take him apart each nightlike brittle clockwork.Then put him back togetherwith your teeth and nails.
Fix what you can.
Kiss every long silence, untiethe thread of each liethen set it free.
Anything he lovesmore than youmust be quieted. [End Page 80]
Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné is a poet and visual artist from Trinidad and Tobago. She is the winner of the 2016 Wasafiri New Writing Prize in Poetry, the 2015 Hollick-Arvon Caribbean Writers’ Prize, and the 2013 Small Axe Poetry Prize. Her work has been featured in numerous publications including Poetry London, the Asian American Literary Review, Cordite Poetry Review, the Caribbean Writer, Small Axe, Anthurium, and Room Magazine, and in the anthology Coming Up Hot: Eight New Poets from the Caribbean (Peekash Press).
