Mothers Day and Two other poems by Paul Sohar

MOTHERS DAY

For Mother, cosmetics were no frivolous indulgence
foisted upon her by rapacious manufacturers
but magic potions
with which she anointed herself
as a priestess-queen in a solemn ceremony
in front of her art deco dressing table
(which she had to sell with the bedroom set after the war to buy bread),

and she didn’t live in a prison built of phalluses and fists
but in a temple she created from an apartment, German fashion mags
and her daydreams.

Nobody ever foisted a thing on her
or made her dance when she didn’t feel like it;
men around her always hopped to her tune.
in front of her art deco dressing table
(which she had to sell with the bedroom set after the war to buy bread),
and she didn’t live in a prison built of phalluses and fists
but in a temple she created from an apartment, German fashion mags
and her daydreams.

Nobody ever foisted a thing on her
or made her dance when she didn’t feel like it;
men around her always hopped to her tune.
Even among the ruins she found hope to water
the life she foisted on us, her children, because
she saw no other alternative.

So, how was I to approach her with my plans
for suicide?
I, who served as an altar boy by her dressing table,
awe-struck by the vestments and scents she slithered into,
by the quick smile she exchanged with her priestly self glaring
from the arched mirror?

I don’t care what you do, she recited firmly, as long as you do
something. And make lots of money. So that you can marry me.

But only as a priest could I have married her,
and priests don’t build balconied Bauhaus villas.

Priesthood was out. I had to jilt her,
running off (courted by machine-gun fire) to another continent
to commit suicide. Not one, but many.
Only the altar boy survived even though
he had not been initiated in her mysteries;
but by now he’s not much more alive than
a frosted-glass perfume atomizer with its tasseled rubber bulb lying
naked on a plywood table at a sunday morning flea market here in NJ.

LEFT-RIGHT!

Left-right, left-right
ready or not the march is on
march you must the sergeant says
but the colonel’s pistol-steely eyes
pick me out from the whole regiment
and make me march alone
in front of the whole regiment
as an example of a failure of a soldier
who can’t even walk straight
but can you run?

Yes, I whimper through my tears

Then get out of my sight as fast as you can
before I throw you into solitary

Sorry about that I later say to the sergeant who
assures me Don’t you worry
the colonel don’t know me from shit and
your summer training’s over you’re a corporal now

And that’s as far as I got in the People’s Army
before I managed to escape across the border
the machine gun fire luckily asleep in the tower

but even now my feet get mixed up
they don’t know left from right
and there’s a march on again
but who knows which foot forward?

DIY THERAPY

What? You can’t climb the ladder?
Or you can, but can’t lug it to the house
and stand it up against the wall? Oh,
the window! That what’s bothering you?

Then do things you can do, things that
come easy. Like forgetting.

Forget about the ladder like you already
forget to close the kitchen cabinet,
turn off the gas on the stove,
put the butter back in the fridge, etc.
you see how easy it is to forget?

So do nothing else but forget. Forget
to pay the bills, forget to bother with
the ladder—or did I say that already?
Forget to brush your teeth,
forget to talk, forget to listen, forget to look,
forget to wipe your nose and ass,
forget to breathe, forget to piss and moan…
you see how easy it is to forget? As easy
as it is to break the upstairs window with the ladder.

So forget the whole effing thing, and it’ll be easy.
One morning you’ll forget to open your eyes
and blissfully forget to get up,
as easily as you forget to zip up.

And forget what I just said, do what you feel like,
go ahead, break that effing window with your ladder.

Paul Sohar ended his higher education with a BA in philosophy and took a day job in a research lab while writing in every genre, publishing seventeen volumes of translations. His own poetry: “Homing Poems” (Iniquity, 2006) and “The Wayward Orchard”, a Wordrunner Prize winner (2011). Other awards: first prize in the 2012 Lincoln Poets Society contest; second prize from RI Writers’ Circle (2014) in prose and three translation prizes. Prose work: “True Tales of a Fictitious Spy” (Synergebooks, 2006) and a collection of one-act plays from One Act Depot (Saskatoon, Canada, 2014). Magazine credits (prose and poetry): Agni, Gargoyle, Osiris, Rattle, Seneca Review, etc.

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