The 19th Amendment & My Mama

I always took it for granted, the right to vote

She said

And I knew what my mother meant

Her voice constricted tightly by the flu A virus

& a 30-year-relationship 

with Newport 100s

I ain’t no chain smoker

she attempts to silence my concern

only a pack a week. That’s good, you know?

My mother survived a husband she didn’t want 

and an addiction that loved her more 

than any human needs

I sit to write a poem about the 100 year Anniversary

of the 19th Amendment 

& my first thought returns to the womb

& those abortions I did not want at first

but alas

The thirst of an almost anything 

is a gorge always looking to be

until the body is filled with more fibroids 

than possibilities

On the 19th hour of the fourth day in a new decade

I will wake restless from some nightmare

about a bomb & a man with no backbone

on a golf course who clicks closed his Motorola phone

like an exclamation point against his misogynistic stance

He swings the golf club with each chant

Women let me grab

Women like me

Women vote until I say they don’t

In my nightmare he is an infective agent

In the clear of day

he is just the same

Every day he breathes is a threat to this country’s marrow

For Ida & Susan & Lucretia & Elizabeth Cady

& every day he tweets grief  

like a cynical cornball comic’s receipts 

like a red light signaling the end of times

The final night of 2019

& my New Year’s Eve plans involves

anything that will numb the pain

of a world breaking its own heart

My mother & I have already spoken

& her lungs are croaking wet

I just want you to know I don’t feel well

& I pause to pull up my stockings beneath my crumpled smile

On this day I sigh

I just wanted to dance & drink & forget about the 61.7% votes

My silk dress falls to my knees with the same swiftness

defiant as the white feminist who said “I’m your ally”

then voted for the demise of our nation’s most ignored

underpaid, imprisoned & impoverished citizens

Every day there is a telephone near 

I miss my mother

In the waiting room of the OB/GYN

Uptown bound on the dirt orange train seat of the subway

O! How my mother loves the places she can never go

Her bones swaddled with arthritis & smoke

So she relies on my daily bemoans

The train smells like yesterday, Ma

They raise the tolls & fix nothing for the people

My landlord refuses to fix my toilet, my bathroom sink, my refrigerator

The city is annoying like an old boyfriend, always buzzing about nothing 

& in the way of me making it on time to the polls

This woman didn’t say thank you when I held the door

& who does she think she is?

Each time I crack & cap on the everydayness of my day

My mother laughs as if she can see the flimsy MTA card

The yellow cabs that refuse to stop for her daughter

In these moments she can live again 

A whole bodied woman with a full mouth

to speak it plain

I ask my mother what hurts? 

What hurts? 

How can I help from here?

3000 miles away

Alone in a tower between the sea 

& the Mexico borders

My mother sighs a little sigh & says

Nothing

I just wanted to hear your voice