I call my mother on my walk home.
Dusk has settled, and I am
reciting the ground I walk on.
How different it feels now that
my birthing hips have grown in.
She asks me how my day was,
What I ate for dinner last night.
I tell her how I engaged in polite sex.
Whispering a lord’s name in the ear of the man
from the bar who asked if I was a religious person.
The air is cold and it bites at my
ankles, but my mother does not
know pain even if I sing it to her.
Instead, she anticipates the echo
of her voice across the phone-line.
I have never owned her interest.
Yet her opinion serves
a potent influence.
I rehearse my week in the mirror so maybe
tomorrow my words will sound like a poem.
I can hear the salivation in my
Mother’s voice as she vomits
names my Father has not heard.
In Bogotá, she was known as Senõra but
I knew she preferred Senõrita in El Campo.
I am not very good at this game;
detangling the conversation,
finding common footing.
My voice grows swollen, and she tells me I am
to pronounce my words like a true Northerner.
I ask her where my college
bible lives, as folded within
the pages is a four-leaf clover.
I should consider myself lucky she kept it safe
and I pray for a life luck could never grant me.
Mary Kelly is an Aotearoa-born poet, editor, and reader. Her work has been featured in various magazines and journals. She lives in Vancouver.
Questions and Answers
Is there a specific moment that inspired you to pursue poetry?
I remember reading a poem that a friend in elementary school wrote about a honeysuckle in her backyard, how badly I wanted to feel everything she felt when writing about that honeysuckle. 9 years later, I still am yet to write a poem about honeysuckles . . .
What did you find challenging in writing this poem?
I think something I found particularly challenging (this applies to all my other poems too) is the feeling of satisfaction. I don’t think there was ever a moment where I felt as though this poem was final, or that this poem did not need to be altered or shaped or rewritten in any way. I rewrote this poem over and over and over until it felt foreign to read. My words became disconnected, like they no longer belonged to me. I think that challenge of never being satisfied is something that always remains. I was once speaking to a poetry professor who read to me the poem “Berryman” by W. S. Merwin in which I realized that never being sure with your work will always be a challenge – but I think that challenge is also the best part about writing.