Motherless Mothers and the Daughters They Bear
I mother myself gentle because my mother’s hands
were rough, cracked, and ruby ringed.
When her mother died, she kept all the jewelry and left me
nothing. Maybe when your mother never mothers you,
it makes you a hoarder. Mother’s Day commemorative plates
from the 70s to the 90s collect dust on the family piano
that never feels fingers along its keys. A behemoth stand
for porcelain plates mocking images of mothering
she never saw. Motherless mothers must mother themselves.
Without anyone to teach them how, they aren’t very good.
The daughters they bear are motherless, too.
This used to be called a cycle. Now our teeth practice saying
intergenerational trauma. I have this deficiency where I can’t
comprehend the consequence of my actions until after
I throw the rock and watch the window break. I say to myself,
So that’s what happens when you throw a rock. My mother’s rage
is what happens. It rocks everything glass within me.
No one showed her how she shines, so she shuts in tight
as a chestnut. It’s her mother’s inheritance: the silver nutcracker
that waited with the bowl of nuts in the living room.
My mother liked the crunch. Her sister likes to collect nutcrackers.
The ones they sell at Christmas. There’s something tragic in that.
The way their mouths stay open. My aunt is hungry. Her daughter
is motherless, too. It’s our grandmother’s inheritance.
My grandmother’s mother must have had hands two stories tall,
made of steel and ready to knock all the light out of a room.
XOCHITL-JULISA BERMEJO is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and the author of Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites (Mouthfeel Press) and Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications). A former Steinbeck Fellow and Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange winner, she’s received residencies from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, Yefe Nof, Jentel, and National Parks Arts Foundation in partnership with Gettysburg National Military Park and Poetry Foundation. Her poem “Battlegrounds” was featured at Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, On Being’s Poetry Unbound, and the anthology, Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World (W.W. Norton). Her poetry and essays can be found at Acentos Review, Huizache, LA Review of Books, The Offing, [Pank], Santa Fe Writers Project, and other journals. She is the director of Women Who Submit. Inspired by her Chicana identity, she works to cultivate love and comfort in chaotic times.
ANNA KIRBY is a community college English instructor living in North Carolina, USA. Her collages have been selected for juried exhibitions across the country.
