Call Your Mother - Ian Drescher

I called my Mother. 

Her voice on the sidewalk 

made the street sound silent. 

 

We talked about the future, 

and her students wailing, 

and the cults in Montana. 

 

We talked about our family, 

the end of the world, 

and what I was eating. 

 

We talked about my day 

and not enough about hers, 

and Nazis in springfield.

 

We talked about the election, 

the season for apples, 

and the way the Madison river bends. 

 

We didn’t talk about the taste in the air, 

pickled obscenities and bigotry, 

or the heat rising in the clouds. 

 

We didn’t talk about oil, 

death and sickness, 

or the way the sun set like a feather, 

We didn’t talk about the crowded bus station,

 the moaning sleeping bags, 

or fragrant sewers. 

 

We didn’t talk about the crows, 

the brightly vacant 7-11, 

or how long the lights take to change. 

 

I called my Mother, 

and her voice on the sidewalk 

made the street sound silent.

To be a good ingredient in the warm soup of modern life, 

You must be the root and the flower, and the stem if you can stretch it. 

You must taste like the sky and smell like rain. 

You must be grown outside, barebacked and boneless. 

You must be patient and angry, still on warm days and buzzing under the clouds. You must 

be some new and brutal casanova, dressed in none of the colors from yesterday. You must

keep your eyes on direct things, to let everything preach to you. You must be your own 

panopticon, deadly and unmistakable. 

You must be the flashing hand on the other side of the busy street, 

your own weather and warning, 

a tall stranger to yourself, 

admirable and impossible.