Holly Day: Love, Mother
Holly Day
Cry!
My daughter cries in the other room
and I think, Cry! Cry!
You have no idea what’s out there, waiting for you.
Get used to the tears.
By the time she’s an adult
the world will be concrete and toxins
and if she’s lucky enough to be
one of the few who can conceive
her babies will face an even worse life
of asthma and environmentally-induced cancers
radioactive clouds and nuclear war.
She cries for her bear and I
bring it to her, kiss her forehead
wish her a better life
deny the inevitabilities.
Holly Day
Love, Mother
there is nothing left for us. I see
things getting worse and there is
nothing else I can offer us
but a way out.
I can only offer my family
the most painless of escapes—two drops
in the children’s cereal
three in my husband’s
morning cup of coffee. soon
there will be peace.
I have struggled with how we are going to
face the future, the mounting bills
the sleepless nights, the fights
and I am taking this into my own hands.
All of this, I do for us.
All of this, I do out of love.
Holly Day
Thoughts From the Top of a Chair
I’ve heard of prisoners in solitary confinement
growing so lonely they tame spiders
lure them to their knees by plucking hairs from their head
stretching them out and playing them like guitar strings
mimicking the sound of a mother spider
sending signals across the web
to her children.
if the buried memory of some warm, comforting
mother spider saying, “Come on home now! Dinner’s ready!”
can make a spider run towards the sound
of a hair being stroked by a rough convict hand
should I feel bad about stepping on them
flushing their twitching hairy bodies down the toilet
squirting them with window cleaner
burning them with alcohol?
Holly Day
In Passing
I wish she’d come back as a vampire,
or a zombie, or even a dog. I just wish
she’d come back. my grandfather
is so alone it’s just not right.
it’d be something to see my grandmother
floating through the air, white as a sheet
cloaked in black, fishnet hose, Elvira breasts
lips half-parted over razor-sharp teeth
or stumbling across the yard, arms held out
awkward in front of her, fingers weakly grasping
with carnivorous intent, eyes open, unseeing
death perpetually rattling in every moaning step
or running up the back stoop, young again, a pup
leaping against my grandfather’s legs
snout upturned in a sloppy kiss, every bit a dog
but with my grandmother’s soul inside, peeking through
every once in a while
to let the world know
she’s still here.
Holly Day
Tentacles
I close my eyes and imagine
he’s an octopus, slithering tentacles
all over my body
one large, supple, firm snake
slipping in
I open my eyes and see
he’s still a man
and I like this man
but I like the octopus more
Holly Day is a travel writing instructor living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband and two children. Her most recent nonfiction books are Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, and Walking Twin Cities.
