Spring Poems Palacio and Kane

Melinda Palacio


It’s National Poetry Momth. April always reminds me of my grandmother because it’s her birth month. She was and is one of my muses. One thing I may not have mentioned before is she is a big Elvis fan. I’m sure she would have enjoyed my Elvis poem from my collection, Bird Forgiveness.

Elvis

All bluebirds are named Elvis. Elvis sighted on my patio. Elvis pecking too close
at leftovers during happy hour. Elvis, not in blue suede shoes, but in soft down, blue fades to gray and brown, a white mottled belly, jet crown despite his feeling so lonely. Elvis, all shook up and fat on corn and sunflower seeds. Elvis crooning and shaking
his tail feathers. Elvis, oh how he loves my fruit trees, takes the sweetest notes from
the middle of the orange and leaves the shell hanging, until a second look reveals his avian trick. Elvis turns loose on smaller birds who try to take his place at the rotating stage of a bird feeder. Elvis, louder than any school girl fan. Hungry cries, a song
I cannot ignore. Elvis leaves the building, flies towards the neighbor's house.

Julie Kane, Louisiana Poet Laureate Emerita shares two poems

STATUE OF MARY’S MOTHER

There is no God, and Mary is his mother. – attributed to George Santayana

She does not take communion on the rare occasions when she finds herself at Mass for a Catholic wedding or funeral, yet she has four images of Mary in her bedroom—five, if you count the lumpy baby Mary being held by her mother, Saint Anne. That little china statue belonged to her grandmother—not the pretty, flirty Gram who was the president of her local altar society, but the other one, with stringy gray hair and nicotine-stained fingers, who lay in bed shrieking curses at the assholes on Boston talk radio. That grandmother, who lost her mother to cancer as a girl, wanted to be a nightclub singer, until she got knocked up in her teens and had to get married. She left the Church when an Irish housemaid aunt with a nest egg died and willed it all to Catholic charities. But she didn’t get rid of the religious statue: she just rolled it up in a soft towel and stashed it in a bureau drawer. Mary is always a baby when portrayed with her mother, because she was three years old when handed over to the temple priests. Did Saint Anne feel sad? Or merely smug at having done her duty? Her likeness stares straight ahead, the gaze unreadable. One hand cups the baby’s bottom, and the other points to heaven. 

​(published in The Mackinac Magazine)

I DREAMED OF BEING MOTHERED BY A CAT

I dreamed of being mothered by a cat,

Sunk in her plush as in a featherbed.

I’d never known a happiness like that.

My human mother’s claws would not retract.

Even her language could unzipper red.

I dreamed of being mothered by a cat

Who’d give her life to save me from attack.

I sensed that fierceness in her as I fed.

I’d never known a happiness like that.

If there were siblings, I ignored that fact.

I had her to myself (or I forget)

The whole time I was mothered by a cat.

One dream can strike you like a thunderclap.

That mother cat, more goddess than a pet.

I’d never known a happiness like that.

The world was pure sensation, not abstract:

Some realm between the living and the dead.

I dreamed of being mothered by a cat

And something healed inside me after that.

​(published in 2 Bridges Review)