Morgan Blalock | Motherhood: Ceramic Plates, Unwashed

March 2019

Morgan Blalock

Motherhood: Ceramic Plates, Unwashed

you are watching the driveway blank itself repeatedly watching the driveway close its teeth over what you thought you could control; it’s all instant coffee now since mom took the filters it’s a lot of the neighbors’ kids coming over saying their own mothers made them check you’d not offed yourself like your daddy which was sad one of them said humble to you on the trailer steps after you woke up from a dream of standing over the sink bleeding out the gums jamming floss-sticks into the tender places; someone at the one-stop says mom rode by tuesday in his bronco — didn’t come in — and doesn’t she think she’s a piece of work with that new man; someone says she left you for good this time doesn’t need your mistakes like bug-eaten cabbage leaves holing her up inside and out your bleeding from the mouth like she’s really hurt you this time, but you will tell them how when her own mother died she watched truTV all day, remote between her legs, got high off the dead woman’s morphine — that you watched her slip away from you like the noodles she used to throw at the wall (done yet? she’d say done yet?) then twirl spaghetti around her fingers instead of a fork both of you laughing so hard it hurt — but now, feet up on the futon you used to share you are praying to somebody’s god-man the drain’s open maw will return her to you by the time you run out of dawn for all her dishes

"Motherhood: Ceramic Plates, Unwashed" was first written several years ago and has since had a few reiterations, different forms, and sound arrangement — but always with the same images. Once I came up with the stronger images in this piece (bleeding gums, the spaghetti noodles hanging, the neighbors’ children on the trailer porch), I spent months placing them into a story that is edged with loss but filled with small glimpses of past joy and hope. I think this piece is nice summation of a complicated matriarch/daughter relationship, and the sharpness behind the way women of a family treat each other, the way a male character can step (silently, in this piece) in the middle.

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