An Uninvited Guest |
Issue 15
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I sat with your mother’s mother
Abandoned by those who claimed to be Too brittle to keep her company As she died in my arms Cancer wreaked her intestines After a summer As a survival camp counselor for disadvantaged children With the putative sire A powerless hulk in tow You came home pregnant Masked shoals of submerged choices Preclude a call to action “It’s all my fault,” you said You chose to send him home And legally declared yourself Intent and on the way to college As an emancipated minor To be more loan-worthy Asked, can you keep my room intact As if it were a sanctuary Ready as I was to stop Cheating on everyone And divorce your mother Buried in a total disorder or ruined values Untimely for me My refugee parents I suppose Could have tried harder Provided more for me Yet I respected that They did their best To come to terms With what was The Great Depression I loved them They loved me Claimed poverty They chose to deny life to my three aborted siblings Not my place to judge For you my daughter In the shadow Cast by my infidelity Misled by entitlement For you it might be easy To be self-righteous For me it is hard to contain An instinct for vengeance Dismayed not to be consulted Before you and your mother opted for the abortion I put aside though barely in my mind The unremitted notion of Grandparents raising your child Which unconscionably Might resurrect my presumed obligation That of a captain on a sinking ship My self-estranged daughter You have become an uninvited guest At a party to celebrate your birthday You are the center of attention Just what you want Lost souls We stay in touch Long enough To define lifelong roles Responding like A betrayed friend might Without empathy My parents deferred to me As if I were a learned professor Agreed to immediately bequeath their nest egg savings To my children A symbolic gesture of sworn loyalty Upon my promise that I would pledge to maintain them A legacy which you used later To secure a rural property My near fatal accidental distracted precipice plunge Off a fast new racing bike Left me with a fractured vertebra and a halfmoon forehead gash Long-term vertigo Brought you to see me in the trauma center Where you picked dried blood from my hair A loving act which Interrupted my desolation You are the product of whimsical unprotected sex We should have known better A diehard romantic Drawn to memorable daring I was to blame Not your mother I forgave myself Your mother spared me From promulgating a despising family tradition As I recalled No one voiced the thought of Voiding your existence I loved you with my heart and soul My self-estranged daughter Now an uninvited guest At an unattended party To celebrate your birthday Where you still Are the center of attention Just what you wanted To second guess or malign you With my rocky second half-life transition Would’ve been hypocrisy Sadly, you are a widow now living on a memorial property Seeded by my parents’ generosity With your pious mother, her Orthodox husband, a caterer, Who both tried to withhold my reciting At your brother’s synagogue confirmation service Until your brother With no prompting Insisted or he wouldn’t participate. Even after I’d agreed To a religious divorce release For her to remarry compliant with the Orthodox protocol Our wedding was unlike yours To an unheralded rock musician In a country style facility Near Woodstock Which I borrowed money to fund Our wedding lacked joy With frenetic friends The gaping Rabbi’s mouth Flapping Hebrew words We were the first of our friends to marry My poor boy’s vision of A detour wedding night At Motel on the Mountain A room on a platform Embedded on a slope A defiance of my fear of heights And lost innocence Whimsical unprotected sex with your virgin mother We should have known better A diehard romantic I was Drawn to memorable daring I forgave myself Though your mother spared me From conspiring with you To kill an unborn child A family tradition My estranged daughter You are an uninvited guest At an unattended party to celebrate your birthday Where you are the center of attention Just what you wanted A flower child widow now living in a memorial property With your pious mother, and her Orthodox husband, a caterer, Who tried to deny my attendance at your brother’s confirmation Synagogue service until your brother insisted or he wouldn’t do it Even after I’d agreed To a religious divorce release For her to remarry as an Orthodox Jew Our wedding was unlike yours to a failed musician At Woodstock Which I borrowed money to fund Our wedding lacked joy With frenetic relatives The gaping Rabbi’s mouth Flapping foreign words The first of our friends to marry At their own table My poor boy’s vision A detour wedding night At Motel of the Mountain A platform room embedded on a slope Defiance of my fear of heights To upgrade the solemnity of dispensing with a maidenhead Followed by a rental car pilgrimage To an offseason beachside cottage on Long Beach Island With fresh seafood, nature, protected sex and fishing Confirmed my new identity We each try to shape our givens Survive and prosper Wish for tolerance and understanding Be honored as parents You were entitled to life As were my unborn siblings I did my best I overcame misfortune After my great fall Humbled Grateful to continue to exist I respect creation and lineage Peace of mind to me is Love expressed for another being As they love you I forgive all But a wall You built Which I can’t climb |
MEL EINHORN won 1st Place of the Poetry Writing Contest. Haunted by insistent sensations, intrigued by streams of consciousness, the poet considers estrangement, emancipation, high respect, great esteem.
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