limited edition of 50
text/art by Kristy Bowen
1st in the 2014 zine series
house made of mothers
Sometimes, mother is a nesting doll, a doll faced mess,
feral beneath her skin and skimping on the potatoes.
Sometimes she’s a hotel fire, and I'm on the wrong side
of the door. All things sugary and greased falling into my hands.
I can't remember the word for the body inside the body, but this
body grows fat and luscious from the honey, from the bees
I keep in the center of my sternum. Away from all
the ballrooms and busted radiators of the brain. That precise spot
in my memory, where I made an ocean of the skin,
my hands scented like citronella and devouring tiny lace cookies
behind the lawnmower in the garage. Sometimes I keep my mother
in the bottom dresser drawer. Write her down on a slip of paper
and burn her to keep away the rats. Sometimes she gets stuck in the drain.
But it's okay, this motherdoll. This dolorous hum.