—for my mother
At 6 o’clock the sun’s already flung itself inside your room:
your youngest child, toy duck in hand—yellow sleeper,
gold duck feet. Dandelions shimmer in the parking strip.
It’s almost real, this morning, the butter on French toast,
Folgers in the percolator, aqua parabolas on the Formica,
crocheted dishcloth you wring out in the sink.
Faithful robins pull faithful earthworms. The clock
clicks, the chime inside tick-ticking like a heart.
At 8 o’clock, the children off to school—wax paper sandwiches,
bologna and mayonnaise, red apples. The children like their milk.
White lilacs from the neighbors’ yard spill like froth. Your hands
feel lacy in this dream, if one dreams in death, the garden
filled with gladiolus, red and yellow blooms like trumpets, like bells
from another world, a room of line-dried sheets and ironed pillowslips.
–
Arlene Naganawa’s chapbooks include Private Graveyard (Gribble Press), The Scarecrow Bride (Red Bird Chapbooks), and The Ark and the Bear (Floating Bridge Press). Her work appears in Waxwing, Calyx, Hummingbird, Crab Creek Review, Belletrist, The Inflectionist Review, LaPiccioletta Barca, Telephone, and other publications. She is a Writer in the Schools with Seattle Arts and Lectures, youth instructor at Hugo House in Seattle, and volunteer writing mentor with Pongo Teen Writing. She received literary grants from Artist Trust and Seattle CityArtists in 2020.