Cover Art: Claes Oldenburg, The Dropped Bowl, with Scattering Slices and Peels–In Advance of the Fountain for Metro-Dade Government Center. 1988. Offset lithograph. MOMA.

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What Remains

i
My mother, a fixture
at the gas stove stirring.
Her hum, a sound score
at sunset. Evening
took its place at the table.
Steam from the orange pot
smelled of tomorrow.
 
ii
I remember the marrow
I sucked, its slick slide
between my teeth.
Then tongue trace 
of hollow, how rough
braille of bone remained
after the swallow.
 
iii
Home was the drawer
where the spoons went
and the space behind
the couch, where I breathed in
what the cat breathed out.
My room, the place where I
could slip into my sleep self.
 
iv
No one banged on our door in the dark.
 
v
Night did not gnash its teeth.
I did not lose a shoe in the mud.
 
vi
I did not wake up in a cage.

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Babo Kamel's poems have appeared in literary reviews in the US, Australia, and Canada. She holds an MFA from  Warren Wilson’s Program for Writers, is a Best of Net nominee, and a  five-time Pushcart nominee. Her chapbook, After, is published with Finishing Line Press. Find her at: babokamel.com

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