Flower Mother, Fever Daughter
by Mei Backof
Mama’s green as chlorophyll, she’s all leaf, all like — til blood unburied your arteries,
mama, popped deep in your throat when you bore me, fevered and wretched. You know
nectar well, know little of spit and not of phlegm—loam your bronchiole, you sour gray,
womb split in the sickbay. Your baby’s not your own—sapless and seedless and
something unknown—aiya mama, you should’ve known—I would never bloom, cause my
flesh your sponge and your sick my omen, scribed rheumy in pneumonia’s sea, drained
within my infant being. Born and built is this body, of sick, of sick, of sin and from that
day I live for disease, I swallow all ill, all malaise, all greedy. Oh mama’s antibiotic,
mama’s pure, mama’s chrysanthemum; yet cancerous thing your daughter is, your
second-and-sickness-born, I’m belly-full—no orchids, never orchids, sleeping pretty on
your chicken—No, no I swallow offal, gorge on meat, bite on organs, congest with
brains. Lungs punched with holes, bought red off the street, I cram them in my belly and
I retch marigolds, from my tongue to my feet. Throatbound does infection run—it coats
my cheeks—all through my teeth—tastes sweet, oh sweet, oh sweet. Yes, mama, I am
your plague, I am pneumonia, I see horror carved in your petal face, when my teeth sink
on skin on muscle on bone—Aiya mama, I’d tell you all my sorries and regrets, but my
mouth’s got no room for flowers now, too full, too membraned, too feathered, too wet.