I learned to imagine that I am a desk lamp
Under a capped sky there is specific light<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My children see me this way despite the evidence Strange that I am your mother? <\/em> they think Instead of exclamations this is literal I was a mess of hair and heartbeat trying to lift it Each minute my sons\u2019 blinking peered to lower But instead I threw some cardboard boxes We are all going to freeze<\/em> or It is all my fault <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is how children remember their mother\u2019s boxes Brenda Serpick<\/strong> is the author of three chapbooks: the other conjunction in it <\/em>(Furniture Press 2018), No Sequence But Luck<\/em> (3 Sad Tigers Press) and The Female Skeleton Makes Her Debut <\/em>(Hophophop Press). She was a participating poet for Tupelo Press\u2019 30\/30 Project (July 2016), and her poems are forthcoming or have appeared in Tule Review, The Potomac, Free State Review, eccolinguistics, Printer\u2019s Devil Review, Spiral Orb, LIT, Lungfull! Magazine, <\/em>and Boog City<\/em> \u2013 among other fine journals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes I ask them, Isn\u2019t it <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s bizarre when I convert to question marks<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A window fell off its bracing odd track<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But every misstep has its own choice<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The shrieking of off-centered-windows<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Who disagreed with statements like<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anxious, tensing, will not budge <\/p>\n\n\n\n