Angela Narciso Torres _Driving My Mother

Driving my Mother to the Dentist I Learn of Her Fear of Umbrellas and Motorcycles

Umbrellas, because her pinky caught in one

once, in a typhoon. Motorcycles, ever since

her mother warned of the gap-toothed man

whose engine sputtered into town with his shiny

pots and pans, how he’d snatch her away

if she didn’t finish her greens. A jeepney

pours carbon monoxide through our window.

We inch our way, she unravels

 

her stories of the war, tells them as though

she were ten again, running through paddies

knee deep in mud and leeches, scattered

gunshot ringing the bowl of night. Huddled

in a shelter with her sisters, hunger’s tooth

in her belly, she fell asleep to a squalling

newborn, a teaspoon scraping a tin

of powdered milk, the sweetest

never to pass her lips.

 

Now she is silent, she who was once

all music, fervor and fire, who can’t recall

what she had for breakfast, or whose

bright-eyed boy played at her feet

this morning. Beyond the traffic,

the cracked plains stretch to the hills.

 

 

By Angela Narciso Torres

Angela Narciso Torres was born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila. Her poems

are available or forthcoming in Baltimore Review, Cimarron Review, Crab Orchard Review,

Cream City Review, North American Review, Rattle, and other publications. A Ragdale

artist fellowship recipient in 2010, she holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College

and co-edits RHINO. She lives in Chicago.