It is skin and flesh, contact and symbiosis. It is fear and tiredness, and at
the same time, it is joy and hope, and for each one of us, it is unique.
–Carolina Oneto, quilt artist
I make quilts that are large enough to cover a family.
–Judith e. Martin, quilt artist
I
What I remember about Uncle David
is a black & white photograph of him
dressed like a girl in a burial gown, blond hair,
eyes closed, in a small coffin lined with white satin.
Sarah died from swallowing glass
while her sister, my Grandmother Rose,
skated on a frozen pond in her red, wool coat.
Uncle Bud, shot and tossed in the trunk
of his own Ford Fairlane, was driven across country
by the man who killed him. It hurt his mother
worse than if he were a baby.
Another ill-fated David, my brother,
perished before our mother ever held him.
And my sister, Mary, passed, dry in the mouth,
before her lips touched mother’s milk. I know nothing
about the deaths of children who came before,
about Katie Mulligan’s babies,
Agnes's and Esther's.
II
Picture your ancestral mother,
belly big and soft as pillow moss
crossing the continents on shifting floors
of ice, and oceans advancing.
Eight hundred thousand years ago —
one of twelve hundred forebears alive
on the planet — she and her babies
navigated earth as glaciers melted
by degree. When droughts persisted,
mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths
died off. Yet your mother survived
on pondweed, bramble, and seed.
Tonight I lay in a cradle of bluestem,
stare at a moon that invites imagination,
and I do imagine her marking time,
wondering when the ducks would return.
III
Gigi sat snug under quilts on her bed.
Her long white braids I petted as she fed me
fruit-flavored treats in exchange for my affection.
Beside her a framed image on the nightstand.
Who were these women clad in long white dresses,
cinched at the waist, white hair, white knots on their heads,
white aprons, and the look of loss in their eyes?
IV
You call me to say you’ve been throwing up again.
First trimester. So I share the story of your ancestral mother,
the one who gave birth on a pile of twigs. You say lucky
she came first, that if destiny had rested on your resolve,
we might not be here. I hear you walk to the freezer,
open the door, tear the wrapper off a Pedialyte popsicle.
Your first child drained from your pocket like crushed berries
while you baked a cake. This one, a daughter (silent,
steadfast), is already preparing the future inside you,
a future never promised, only hoped for. Dare I call it a miracle?
She lives because you do, because I did, because
against all odds, a woman once wrested bark from a tree,
put larvae to her lips and delivered us.
*
Invocation
We didn’t know what we prayed for
each night, but it was important
to our mother – her special intention
a secret, like the chocolate she kept
in a cupboard she thought we couldn’t reach.
But this was neither chocolate nor pleasure
nor anywhere near our grasp.
It wasn’t a thing we could pull up a chair to,
or climb on a counter to feel our way
into the dark corner cabinet past all the sealed Clark Bars,
the Kit Kats and Mars Bars, until we discovered,
and we always discovered, the open Snickers,
the odd Hershey square we broke off, nibbled,
or hid in our pockets before she entered the room.
We hid all kinds of food, just like she hid things.
Once I sneaked down to the basement,
dug into the deep freeze for an ice cream sandwich
I had veiled behind frozen peas and pork chops,
when I fingered a ponderous wad of paper towel
that bore a gold stone the size of my fist.
Treasure she held in reserve just in case
the prayers didn't work. Yes, we had control issues,
trust issues, all of us, which we learned in Al-Anon
was a gift from our father long before
those prayers our mother channeled
through us. On summer nights,
windows flung open, our blind appeals floated,
like our father's cigarette smoke,
on nothing more than faith.
*
The Morning I Noticed
the burning bush,
the morning I lifted the cat,
felt the hard ball in her belly,
a heart that beat like a hummingbird
in my hand, the morning I held her
heart in my palm, a thin veil of skin
between her manic heart and the palm
of my hand, the morning I drove
her to the vet, past the burning bush
and thought this is the most brilliant red
I have ever seen, the morning the cat,
in a cardboard box in the backseat,
called out to me, the morning I heard
children from Gaza cry over radio waves,
the red was so splendid, the cry
in the backseat so fierce,
the bush so brilliant
Deni Naffziger's work has appeared in New Ohio Review, Atticus Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Northern Appalachian Review, and elsewhere. Her second collection of poems is Strange Bodies (Shadelandhouse Modern Press, 2023). She currently serves as Poet-In-Residence at Passion Works Collaborative Studio in Athens, Ohio.