Babette Cieskowski | To My Mother | Glass: A Journal of Poetry

Originally from Oahu, Hawaii, Babette Cieskowski has lived in southern Florida, Kitzingen, Germany and Central Texas. She currently lives in Columbus, Ohio. Her poetry has been included in Z Publishing House's Emerging Poets of Ohio book. Her poems have appeared in Compose, Qu, the minnesota review, Day One and others.

Also by Babette Cieskowski: Three Poems Ray

March 2018
Ohio Poets

Babette Cieskowski

To My Mother

I can't tell you the thoughts that reach me, the dark hand pulling my body

from sleep, as if to say I'm violet light, again — I'm one of them; I'm alone.

Tell me the story of gravitation, of how you saw yourself in me,

your oldest daughter in your favorite dress. The blue one — with the cherries,

sprouting wild from within. Are you the bluebird singing bones? Are you tenderness

reborn? Sit with me in cherry darkness. Sit with me, alone. Sing why you get high

on fairytales, on anything with wings. In your voice, a guide to growing

old: There's never enough time and there simply never will be.

I'm currently writing a lot of poetry based on my family, specifically my mother. This poem was inspired by the little things that remind me of her and how I often don't realize how similar we are as far as aesthetics go; I wear a lot of her old clothing and when I see pictures of her when she was my age, I'm reminded of how alike we are, despite me looking more like my father than my mother. This poem was also inspired by the ways in which she and I communicate. I wanted there to be an epistolary form to this piece, but the metaphoric letter/note itself leaves more questions than explicit information. Overall, this poem is a meditation on how my mother and I are both alike and hidden from one another.

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