Rasma Haidri Poems

To write a small note

each day of his first-born's life
...

Everything my mother needs can be found at Woodman's:
cigarettes, milk, unsalted rice cakes, and six black bottles
of diet cola. I want to buy a lottery ticket she adds,
weaving stiff-kneed, half-blind, to the far corner,
...

My daughter is in his lap like flowers,
like the bouquet delivered to the door
three days later. But that is not the miracle.
The miracle is my mother appearing uninvited,
...

There is girl clutter on the floor:
hairbrushes, ribbons, plastic glitter
and socks.
...

Bears


Remember, we're all bears! my daughter says.
...

From the window we watched the skunk mother

Waddle legless through our lawn.
...

In the dolphin waters

waves pull
...

Today the water is still.This is what they call mirror-water, glass-water, quiet-face-of-the-sky-water.If you could have waited ten years my son, my daring boy, the water off the break wall would have been this water:calm, cradle-safe for even a baby, my baby, you, my rumble tumble boy.


But no, today you would have been twenty-eight, too old, too safe, too cautious to be my boy, my lost youth boy, my just man, just barely grown boy, my climbing see me jump Ma! see how high I am boy.
...

- for Jason

How does a mother get ready for bed
the night her son hangs himself?
...

Driving over a hill
we saw a blackbird
circling wildly
panicking
...