Lessons in Forgetting

Malaika King Albrecht

     

     Three poems from the book : Lessons in Forgetting by Malaika King Albrecht*

     

    Lessons in Forgetting

    Light a cigarette
                while another one
                            burns in the ashtray.
     
    Lose keys, your purse,
                credit cards, earrings,
                            reading glasses, the way home. 
     
    Call your daughter your sister’s name.
                Call the puppy
                            the dead dog’s name. 
     
    Hit the gas
                instead of the brakes.  
                            Slam into the van in front of you.
     
    Turn the wrong way out of the bathroom.
                Stand in front of the wall looking for a door.
                            Yell, My bedroom is gone.
     
     Say you don’t have
                children or a husband 
                            and want your daddy.
     
    Learn to see dead family members
                in the dark. Over
                            and over, call to them. 

     

    Where I Find Her
     
    She’s in a bite of my Irish stew
    and a sip of old coffee.
    She’s in my kitchen in her Self-Portrait
    with Phone in a cadmium red sweater.
    She hangs in my closet
    in a favorite hand-me-down dress,
    in the gardenia soap my sister gives me,
    and in the curled M of my handwriting.
     
    She’s in the whippoorwill’s call,
    the erratic flight of the woodpecker
    from the longleaf pine to the oak
    and its ghostly knock-knock-knock.
    She’s in the car that peels out
    in front of me, so that I catch the license plate
    with her name Patsride.
    She’s the stoplight that gives me a moment
    to enjoy roadside forsythia,
    its yellow lack of restraint.
     
    I find her in a brown speck in my eye,
    the half moons of my nails, the slight gap
    between my two front teeth.
    She’s everywhere, even my sleep
    where she walks again. But she’s not
    in that body with its broken window
    of a smile and its every day
    incremental goodbyes.
     


     
    She’s Forgotten that She Used to Smoke
     
    How often did she singe her eye brows
    leaning too close to the small blue ring
    of fire from the stove’s gas burner,
    a cigarette dangling from her lips,
    drunk on boxed white wine?
     
    Because it’s June 6, we give Mom
    birthday wine in a baby bottle
    and a single chocolate square.
    She does not ask for more.
    No candles or even cake.
     
    She sleeps, her mouth
    open like she might speak.
    In the dark kitchen, the pilot light
    is a single blue eye,
    blue as the spark that strikes
    us alive and burns through
    our lives like we’re paper.
     
    The same flame
    that will extinguish
    with her last exhalation,
    a soft white moth lifting from her mouth,
    wheeling upwards from this hospital bed,
    drunk on light,
    a wisp of smoke on her lips.

    ---------------------------------------------------------

    * Lessons in Forgetting is scheduled for release in early May. The cover price will be $7, but by ordering it online from the publisher's website, you can get it for $3.50 plus shipping. Here is a link that will take you directly there: http://www.mainstreetrag.com/MAlbrecht.html   
     

    

Malaika King Albrecht - Malaika King Albrecht’s poems have been or are forthcoming in many literary magazines and anthologies, such as Kakalak: an Anthology of Carolina Poets, Pebble Lake Review, Letters to the World, The Pedestal Magazine, Shampoo, Poemeleon, and New Orleans Review. She has taught creative writing to sexual abuse/assault survivors and to addicts and alcoholics in therapy groups and also is a volunteer poet in local schools. Her manuscript Spil has been a finalist in several book contests
    Address: 62 Kilbride Drive
    Pinehurst, NC 28374
    Phone: (910) 255-0646

    e-mail: pomegranite8@hotmail.com
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