Friday, April 27, 2018

24/30

Change the conversation.
            ~ Don Draper



my mother was a hoarder this is not a cautionary tale this is true my mother hoarded secrets my mother was a hoarder she hoarded held held on to everything except husbands except children my mother was a hoarder like the television show but worse my mother was a hoarder she hoarded Joan Rivers jewelry sweaters shoes pictures torn from magazines towels soap chips dirt dead animals secrets my mother was a hoarder we did not speak for a century when she was eighty and four I visited her house my mother was a hoarder like the television show which never reveals the smell the death linger the secrets my mother was a hoarder when she died at eighty and nine a dead apricot poodle discovered behind her refrigerator and the rest the rest my mother was a hoarder I do not watch the television show I know the smell my mother was a hoarder oh the smell a corpse floating in ditch water my mother was a hoarder she hoarded secrets bodies the smell a corpse floating in milk my mother was a hoarder worse than you can imagine narrow pathway through her house littered with dead mice dog shit on the table birds screaming from cages dander coating grease walls my mother was a hoarder kept corpses floating wet in her house with its perfectly manicured lawn my mother was a hoarder hoarded secrets hoarded her hubands hoarded her children hard enough to float them dead dead in sour pools of milk

7 Comments:

Blogger 37paddington said...

the most devastating line in this devastating poem is "her house with its perfectly manicured lawn."

you might be writing another book with these poems, an autobiography.

maybe.

April 27, 2018 at 12:33 PM  
Blogger Radish King said...

Oh god I don’t know if I have the courage these poems make me ill, but my son has said the same. Also I just used one of my five allotted in my lifetime commas. For you. Because I love you.
R

April 27, 2018 at 12:45 PM  
Blogger Radish King said...

I also believe that I can’t write the poem I want to write until I write the poem I’m supposed to write. One poem passes its seed into the next poem if that makes sense so I have to write the poems that make me ill or I stop. xo

April 27, 2018 at 1:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hugs Rebecca. This must be so very hard.
Xoxo
Barbara

April 27, 2018 at 4:57 PM  
Blogger Radish King said...

Thank you Barbara, it is both hard and extremely cathartic. I am relieved to be telling the truth bang in these poems rather than fancy dancing around it though I didn’t have an inkling of what was to come when I signed on for 30 in 30, but it shook me out of my writing slumber. Love Rebecca

April 29, 2018 at 4:51 PM  
Blogger Pamela Johnson Parker said...

The top of my head just exploded. I think this might be a book, too. XOXOX.

April 30, 2018 at 4:06 PM  
Blogger Radish King said...

Hi Pamela and thank you. Maybe a book. Maybe after my death. Right now I just feel tired. xo

April 30, 2018 at 8:41 PM  

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