After My Brother Died in An Explosion
Our mother took up smoking. She would sit
by a window cracked by the blast that killed
him, legs crossed at the ankles, her auburn hair
flowing down her back like a swollen creek.
Smoke rose from her lips and swirled around
the room like her son’s spirit leaving his body
to the sound of sirens, the hiss of busted pipes.
Days went by when she barely spoke to anyone,
kept to her bedroom when people came to call,
was comforted by nothing. And all the while, she
smoked and smoked, her grief raw as a wound,
constantly weeping. It seemed as though her
will to live disappeared like a child rounding
a busy street corner, his mother frantic to catch
him before he dashed into the street. And then,
at what cost we cannot know, she returned to us.
It was like she never left—the only proof of her
pain the sorrow peering through her eyes like a
prisoner, crumpled packs of smokes in the trash.
*
Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven full-length collections of poetry, including her latest collection, Night Talks: New & Selected Poems (Press 53), which was a finalist for (general) poetry in the International Book Awards and the Best Book Awards. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of literary journals, anthologies, magazines, and newspapers, including “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, JAMA, Poetry Foundation, Rattle, The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and many more. Among her numerous awards are the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Nautilus Silver Book Award, Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize, and the Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize. She lives in North Carolina.
Terri is one of my favorite contemporary poets.
Amazing work, Terri, as usual, but this one hits home for me. 🥀
Powerful poem.
Great poem.
This poem floored me. Terri creates these indelible images through powerful language and original metaphor, which not only anchors the reader in the poem but turns them into a first hand witness along with the narrator to the mother’s grief, which is palpable.
Losing a child is absolute agony. To write a poem that both haunts and evokes emotion takes great skill, takes mastery.
her auburn hair
flowing down her back like a swollen creek.
Smoke rose from her lips and swirled around
the room like her son’s spirit leaving his body
…
And all the while, she
smoked and smoked, her grief raw as a wound,
constantly weeping.
Though this focuses on the mother, beautifully, I also think of the narrator, a dual loss, losing her brother and at the same time actually losing her mother. I lost my elderly brother, no special circumstances, just age. And still I ache.