—Renée Schell
O Pablo, write me an ode
to surgical steel.
Write me an ode
to titanium.
Let your Spanish seep
into my mother’s ear
like blood into gauze.
Her lilting voice breaks.
Her sentence has a hole.
Her thought has a hole.
The names of her grandchildren
are fused to the far side
of her brain.
Pry her tongue from the roof of her mouth.
Make her say “salt cellar.”
Help her say “surgery.”
Let her say “outcome.
One definite advantage to having blog duties: I constantly am brought back in contact with such beautiful work! This is such an amazing poem, Renée; it carries such force, such feeling, in the simple words you use. Very much like Pablo. Brava.