20 years i have neglected to 
ask my mother to sing

1.
kumbayah banish 
the shadows off
a night light--
this is the rocking chair
with my name carved into the neck--
this is how i went to sleep
when i was six--
my father's tongue 
was another 
bed time story book-mark 
but it was my mother 
who walked with us to sleep--
sing
i said-- 
and my mother said
she was never good at singing
she said she was 
out of key
but she still sang kumbayah
in a voice that i can 
still hear in the throat of 
nightlight--
kumbayah my lord
kumbayah 
kumbayah 
kumbayah

2.
I dreamed again of my teeth
falling out on the carpet--
sudden as sleet--
picked them to fill a plastic cup
returned them to my mother--
ringing like wind chimes
or maraca heads--
i woke her up to the
sound of baby teeth spilling on her
bed room 
floor--
slept beside her
on the carpet as she hummed
ave maria into the
back of a closet--
dysphoric darkness
of sleepy headlights paced
out the windows--
slick hush of a tires
in the rain--

3.
roll down the car window--
god is in the
voice of the rushing air
on the way to my grandmother's 
apartment--
we pray cigarette stain 
out of our skin--

4.
the puckered 
lips of a trumpet
in a ska band to 
kiss us out of new jersey
on a star-heavy night
5.
dulaman dulaman 
we drove to ireland
on the way back from school
and
my mother told us about
where she had hidden
our seal skin--
above her dresser
with all her broaches--
the stone garden 

6.
years of kumbayah was enough 
to break the windows
from the frames
when i no longer knew
what a song sounded like--
listened to the 
pipes in house 
crack
and crack
like the windshield of
the blue station wagon--

7.
if my father was a nowhere
man than my mother was
an everywhere woman--
the stitch in a 
blue and green poncho--
the spotted slipper
wet in the snow--

8.
the fishtail braid
in the before fourth grade--
fate of the morning 
dove who forgot
my mother's name
tangled in an electric
wire--

9.
the disk of 
the pope reading the
rosary that somehow 
became a song
i would never learn how
to sing 

10.
i asked my mother to
sing to me in her bare feet
on our back porch 
in august 
when everything was alive again--
she sings kumbayah better
than the knees of a fire--
and she has always 
held an open window
like a hymnal
kept church on a dash board

11.
i don't always believe
in god but
i believe in my mother's seal 
skin she keeps in the closet
and her garden 
of broaches--
even if the jewels
are only glass--

12.
believe in corn field
and charcoal--
and knitting needle
to tie us back into
a slumped coach in then 
living room--

13.
i believe in a nightlight
shaped like saint mary

14.
i believe a confessional 
can be a poem--
can be a rosary cd
can be a chocolate chip scone--

15.
i don't ask my mother
to sing enough--
i forget that she sings 
because her kind of
song is what you hear
when you think there's no
one singing--
when the curtain become
opera singers
and the kitchen table
in a punk rocker with
mayonnaise in the hair--

16.
my mother's voice is
tires hushing you
in the rain--

17.
my mother's voice is 
wooden wind chime

18.
blistered raspberry

19.
rocking chair

20.
the hymnal 
for a midnight and
the only prayer 
that keeps coming
back to me.