Reading Beowulf, I Remember My Mother’s Address Book
by Candice Kelsey
I
Atop her stack of cascading bills and letters
like a Polly Pal paperweight or pink
and white gingham kenning its mylar cover
uncharacteristic of the middle-aged woman
gate-keeping my firedrake adolescence
this blond breaker of rings with curved bang
bowl-cut hair helmet as gleamy and round
as her ivory bracelet battle tusks from Thailand
an elephant graveyard stacked like slain
warriors pitching about the Valhalla of her
nacreous forearm and wrist this poached score
of my childhood was a cacophonous death rattle
II
Mornings brought finger snaps be quiet can’t you
see I’m on the phone and every brandish of her fist
heads will roll and the ease of her ball point
strike-through heavy and scriptorium-slow across
the pages moments after hearing the news
of the latest friend or relative no longer around
fingering A-Z tabs for names and addresses
like my godparents Peter and Mary Kunda
at 543 Prospect Avenue Scranton PA now gone
III
Into the earth and out of her cache of Ks they lay
near cousin Frances Klein and Dr. Koursh
each donning my mother’s skull and cross-outs
her casual delineation between the living
and the dead between Christmas cards and ancient
history swift as the tornado in ’79 descending
moments after I stepped from the afternoon
bus with Jane Connors when her own chimney’s
brick struck her head–I wanted to empty her
backpack and take her new supply of erasable
pens pooling like Freyja’s tears the only
hope I had against my mother’s hand in the Cs
Candice M. Kelsey [she/her] is a writer and educator living in Los Angeles and Georgia. She has been featured in SWWIM, The Laurel Review, Poet Lore, Passengers Journal, and About Place among others. Candice mentors an incarcerated writer through PEN America and reads for The Los Angeles Review. Her comfort-character is Jessica Fletcher. Please find her @Feed_Me_Poetry and candicemkelseypoet.com.