inheritance
a fury to this evening’s light
memory
of my mother’s fist in her lap
her tight jaw recalled rapes of clients in the 50’s
her crazed look and search for doctors
abortions
for women with few options
her lessons to a daughter on the soft work of her body
today’s news unhinges its jaw
shudder
I climb inside the slick cons
watch the vote and can’t bear the thought
of robed strangers deciding
they know
the cost to a woman
fist in my lap as night lowers its black knife
.
Polka Dots and Moonbeams* at the Blue Note
Hank Jones owns his stage—
small frame hunched at the piano
soft swish of drum brush
deep base twang
a crowd of jazz-crazed locals and random tourists
with their longings and irritations
margaritas and warm wine
at midnight
Polka Dots and Moonbeams
lifts from the keyboard as if a train passed
through town
its whistle gone in the night
syncopated rhythms
pour over fissured terrain of table tops
eliminate tortures of human speech
with their loss of meaning
Meanwhile, whatever
this dull world asks me
to surrender for sanity’s sake
shuffles out the door with Hank’s help
I could lose years like this up all night and no god
my soul’s flustered trilling gone
his music walking me home
one bright star left before sunrise
© Nancy Huxtable Mohr
Nancy Huxtable Mohr is a retired teacher. She lives in Northern California and Upstate New York. She is a member of the Community of Writers, California Poets in the Schools, and did a year of Independent Study at Stanford (2015) with Eavan Boland. Recent work can be found in The MacGuffin, Hyacinth Review, Tipton Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, BeZine, and others. She has one book, The Well (Butternut Press 2018).
The Loch Raven Review 