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Three Poems by Martha Andrews Donovan

The Month of Readying

All August my mother flailed in her bed, afraid
to die. I eased Beatrice out of Harpswell Cove,
one last sail before the hauling. I really didn’t want

to fish, but still I tied the jig and dropped the line
into the hairpin curve of the sea, expecting nothing,
and in the time it would take my mother to untangle

her leg from the twisted sheets, I felt a tug and reeled
in the line, glistening with one, two, three mackerel –
they had been too hungry to wait. It was that easy.

Shedding

Each night, she arches her back, presses
her peeling flesh against the twisted sheets

of her pain, lifts her head, hisses. She’s proving
just how far jaws can open. If only death

would swallow her, the way a snake might –
whole and complete.

Good Mother

You were the dutiful mother: collecting
teeth, locks of hair for my baby book,
baking eggs, washing toothpaste from the walls,
cleaning my forehead when I was pushed
from the slide, hiding your gin breath
behind the books you read to me at night.
Sometimes, when I am taking a bath,
I hear the wooden beams expand
with the heat. Is that you mother?
Have you come for more teeth,
another lock of hair?