Dreaming in Sugar
Given this unwanted abundance of whatever time is, I exercise my right to remain Mom’s silent boy in tears with a barbequed jalapeño pepper and a thick homemade shake keeping eyes and mouth shut: better seen than seeing. Only the Medjool date plucked from the palm out front can reach through all the sand and syrup covering the green couch where my gone, gone mother sits in Ronald McDonald makeup whispering, let’s scratch and win. I am hungry from 20 days of fasting but I comply and grab the sun-scorched dirham that always flicks foil in accordance with the rules: add three, subtract by two, divide by the ratio a speckled banana makes when it
is sprinkled with cinnamon . All my math clouds crack a code made for digging at least one of us out but all the neighborhood gossips want to know is, how’d you sneak your Mom in?
Jeff Coleman is a celebrated publisher, writer and poet, who holds degrees in sociology and social work, special education, and educational administration. “During this isolation, I have had the opportunity to focus on managing my Type 1 diabetes in some new and exciting ways. Part of that has included fasting for Ramadan [as a non-Muslim] for the first time in my life. This poem is attempting to reconcile the grief that comes from being distant from both the living and the dead with the hopeful elements that can come from more time to meet individual and small family needs. In it, memory, fear, sickness, health, sadness and hope try to find a way to share the same room.”
57
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online