Patty Paine

Elegy & Collapse

Last house on Jackson, facing mountains
incised with trails: K2, Widow’s Run,
Kamikaze. Just inside the front door, a sunburst

of one by one tiles, patiently laid
by my stepfather in the house

where my mother’s slow dying began,
years before she ended
up in singlewide crammed with glass angels.

No, that’s not right. I missed too much. I brought you
in without showing how my mother lived

on an orange couch. Asleep
in a Demerol haze all day, she rose at night
while her husband pumped rivets into Ford F-150’s.

I listened to her slippering room to room, crying and
crying. I had so much

hope when I sat to this, such ambition. I wanted to take you
through the houses, the two story brick with scuffed floors, and
rough basement steps where I sat one Sunday morning a Ked

stuffed in my mouth, punishment for being unable to tell
left from right. I wanted to show you

the orange ranch and its sloping yard that edged a field buzzing
with mini-bikes. Then finally, I’d take you
into the cramped trailer where I spent

ten weeks with my mother before she died. I wanted you
to know every morning I polished each angel into blades

of light. I wanted you to meet
Tanner, my pit bull, who followed my mother everywhere,
and started howling an hour before she died, then

for two hours after. How I stared
at my mother’s parakeet, while outside the window

behind its cage, a hummingbird vibrated
the honeysuckle. And yes, I admit, I filed this moment
with some notion of a line including “all startle,” and

“glissandos the air…” I wanted this poem
to have such terrible momentum it would rip

tide you through, pull you and pull you until you were battered
by the image that keeps coming back
to me: 4th century mosaic: a man propped up

by another as a tiger tears his face. A hand hovers
over, shaking as the last scarlet tile is pressed into place.