Agoloso Presents - Atondido Stories Agoloso Presents - Mama Mada | Page 230

Mama Mada
Strayed by Jacq ue lyn Po p e
In the dream you are a dark shape,
a shadow turning, silent but still alive.
With a wave of your hands you show me
suffering is simple misunderstanding:
mine, repeated like a riddle chasing
after its answer, indifferent to grief.
Day intervenes. The dream dissolves
and with it you are gone again,
for now you cannot stop vanishing.
Still the rage of it hangs in the air
stinging and dirty and burnt, a pyre
heaped around your orphaned heart,
your widowed line, your life, like ash
that sifts through any dream of sleep.
The Woman, a Coat and Her Behaviour by Re b e cca G o ss
I spot her trying on the coat from the far end
of the shop. She’s doing what normal women do –
turning a little this way, a little that way, in a swing
of black ribbon and felt. Her slim wrists slide
into pockets and her head tilts back to catch
her husband’s smile. She laughs at her own behaviour.
If customers knew she had a son wasting in a hospital,
would they approve of this coquettish dance? Parents
of the almost-dead cannot always be bed-side, reverent
and mute. This small act affirms what they had,
when a telephone call from their son was enough.
Let her arms fill the sleeves of a beautiful coat
before she delivers clean pyjamas, leans to kiss
a dumb mouth and carousels his life, from baby to boy.
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