Housekeeping

my mother’s going-to-a-doctor’s-appointment

dress — black wool, empire waist, pearls

above, seamed stockings below — her face

a thunderstorm, she waits on my client’s porch

calls me out, chews me out for lowering

myself, she who’s raised herself from dirt-

poor Catholic to wife of a bigamous drink-

& drug-addled WASP doctor — How dare

you demean everything we stand for?

I don’t engage, stand there on yellowing

lawn surrounded by oak & maple woods

hot with New Jersey summer, how can she

not sweat in that dress? how can I

convince her to leave? I’ve two more bathrooms

to clean, not a single hair, the woman

inspects, I tell her, Go! Leave me alone

I’m not coming back home — what’s home?

she moved to DC, only later noticed

she’d forgotten me, how she traced me

I never thought to ask, I thought her diseased —

lipstick, permed curls — what she stood for

hadn’t a goddamned thing to do with me