by guest poet Luciano Iacobelli
Mother rolled her own dough
and made her own pasta.
The sauce, produce from backyard tomatoes,
simmered daily on the elements.
Little read splotches covered the stove top.
She couldn’t understand
why I rejected the home cooking:
tired of the food I’d known all my life,
I ate sandwiches in restaurants.
But one Sunday afternoon, I stayed home
and stared at her as she shelled peas,
stared at the light reflecting
off the metal bowl, stared around the kitchen,
at the arrangement of utensils, and thought to myself,
my God, what a picture this is!
When my mother wasn’t looking,
I dipped my finger in the sauce
and an old appetite returned.
That same day she complained of an ache.
A few weeks later we were told the worst.
A few months more, she was
an emaciated memory.
After the funeral, I sat on the back porch
and my grief was a bright red geranium,
the weeds were the garden’s condolence,
the morning glories clung desperately
to the railing, and I was hungry for the meals
I had once refused to eat.
As appears in Luciano Iacobelli’s The Angel Notebook (Seraphim Editions: Hamilton, 2007). Luciano Iacobelli can be reached through his website at http://www.lyricalmyricalpress.com/