Tag: Lara Payne

The Translucent Mother by Lara Payne

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The Translucent Mother

That night I thought you were dead I didn’t think once about your ghost, or worry you would haunt me. Of all I did not do for you. Of all you did not do for me. The police used the photo I gave them, found you bloody toed and confused. The next day you told me you don’t know how you wandered for 12 hours, never once asking for help. Am I kind to strangers because of you and your illness? Your ease of disappearance. I suckled 6 weeks, you told me once, so you knew you’d never get cancer. I’m used to your magical thinking, and barely argued. To what point? Perhaps I don’t need to imagine your ghost, as your presence has always been a bit translucent. Easily blown by any wind. Your voice changing cadence with each new friend or love. Chameleon. My first love, my first loss. The person I try every day to both love and be nothing like. Mother, half gone. Mother disappeared.

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Lara Payne lives in Maryland. Once an archeologist, she now teaches writing at the college level, to veterans, and to small children. Her poems, many of which explore the Chesapeake environment and people, have appeared in a museum, on buses, and in print and online journals. Recent poems have appeared in Gargoyle and online with SWWIM Daily.

Milkweed Pod by Lara Payne

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Milkweed Pod

Sharp billed husk, unopened. Winter cracked,
wind wheeled. Such possibility, waiting. Carried miles
or stuffed into the lifejackets of soldiers. Perhaps

even worn by my grandfather, fighting in the Pacific.
Milkweed pods open to a silky fluff. Twenty pounds of floss
to float one man. Insulation. Insect born.

Such weightlessness may have saved him, once, on the way
from ship to shore. He did not breathe a word. Silent return. If
every letter he wrote to my grandmother held two truths

and a lie, to calm and distract the military censors, how
will we find the truth? Husked, sharp billed
nestled gently in the palm, a shape he didn’t yet know

to desire: that split. All of his possible progeny.
He carried parachute silk home for her, to sew
into her wedding gown. Such economy, such abundance

coming from his duffle bag. Unending as a magic trick
yards spilling silk into her hands, both of them laughing.
Unrationed laughter, an almost mania of relief.

Radiation from that shore in Japan, a pinprick
in his brain. Waiting.

*

Lara Payne lives in Maryland. Once an archeologist, she now teaches writing at the college level, to veterans, and to small children. Her poem “Corn Stand, 10 ears for two dollars” was a winner in the Moving Words Competition. and was placed on buses in Arlington, VA. Recent poems have appeared in the Beltway Poetry Quarterly and on SWWIM Daily.