MY MOTHER’S BODY

by Stuart Beatch

Home 9 Composers 9 STUART BEATCH 9 MY MOTHER’S BODY

LYRICS

Ravens lift, weightless in the updraft

snow dusts clay like flour on a stone surface.
 
My mother, white-haired goddess on thin legs
watches the wind-players and laughs with them.
 
I watch my mother watch the birds. Her soft eyes fall
and lift again. She was sick for a year a year I wasn’t home.
 
When the organ of your body that is programmed to give life turns
against you, how do you still say woman? I was drinking in a hostel
 
half way across the world. I remember I had 3 minutes of Internet left
when I opened the email with a picture of my mother
 
with cloth for hair. My dad shaved his beard. I cried
in a room full of faces I didn’t know. A flock of
 
ravens is called unkindness. I’m watching
them in the lines of my mother’s body
 
and it seems impossible to believe
in bad omens. She steps on frozen
 
sage. And for a minute laughing
feels like floating
 
 
Complete Text by Zara Neukom (b. 1991) 

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