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No Lemon, No Ice, No Sugar
Christopher Lawless
My mother in another man’s arms
being carried from the Little League field
where my brother’s team lost;
in the heat of the sun
it was a mirage coming from the stands
being carried past the dugout
passed the high knee socks
passed the parents
wondering whose mother it was
my brother and I knowing
her condition
and her attempt to never rid herself of it.
Being carried
she hung from his arms like religion
and she was Mary to us,
laid before men, not manger.
We were taken away in my father’s van
back to the house
but I remembered the Genesee River,
being carried by inflatable rafts
two in each one
my brother and father,
my nephew and I in the other
pushing off the rocks into shallow water
pushing to the deep current
under the Fillmore bridge.
Being carried halfway down
the winds picked up before the river,
the static air clapped
and the sky turned to storm.
We left the water
laid face down on the rocks
held on to one raft with eight arms
lightning in the treetops.
The other raft, being carried
thrown like a skipped stone
over the current and out of sight.
We walked back to the car
with one raft, one oar, and one hell of a story
to tell my mother
who was taken to the hospital
being carried by ambulance
and she slept without speaking.
From her bedside hung
plastic bag, tar black from her lungs
and a machine played Messiah.
The hospital halls echoed
like a fly’s buzz in a Ball jar
being carried by a six year old.
The open doors left the smell of the forgotten
voices under masks stopped breathing
women in white ran passed
returning in red
pulling the remains of a Spanish accountant
whose wife had cut him
being carried through the lunch tray doors
into the ER, disappearing
among the many machines, beeps, and latex gloves.
The hospital held a strange embrace of things;
a man bleeding to death, my mother strung like a puppet
her lungs leaking sewage, from an unfiltered body
her hands laid out, ash still in her fingernails
the smell of resin, being carried over the room
stopping at each nostril of each person
reminding them what death was
in room 302, where her mother had spent so many days
ordering nurses around, making herself at home
leaving Christmas Eve to die in her own bed
under her Navajo quilt,
ships her husband had made still hanging on the walls.
It was a week before the bag cleared
and my mother had the strength to speak.
She told us she dreamed;
carried to each of our bedrooms, by a hand shadowed
and our skin collapsed when she touched it,
stained the sheets and her hands
suffocated the air, choked her awake.
We said goodbye to Judy at the reception’s desk
Paula the nurse, and Dr. Patel,
took the deflated balloons and wilted flowers
pushed my mother out the front door
carried by a wheel chair,
to the van that took my brother and I away from her the first time.
On the way home we stopped at McDonalds
I got my number 5, my brother his number 6, my father, just a water please,
and for my mother, a Winston regular
a large iced tea, with no lemon, no ice, no sugar.
