"#to my moher's dementia #kaze no denwa" by Lee Ann Roripaugh

[View this email on a browser]( [Forward to a friend]( [facebook-icon]( [tumblr-icon]( [twitter-icon]( July 24, 2019 [#to my mother’s dementia #kaze no denwa]( [Lee Ann Roripaugh]( how do I admit I’m almost glad of it? the way it’s scraped off those flash-storms of rage I grew delicately-feathered luna moth antennae to fine-tune your emotional weather: sometimes a barometric shift in the house’s atmosphere / a tight quickening / some hard dark shadow flickering glossy as obsidian pulled down like a nightshade behind your irises / but sometimes you struck with no warning at all rattlesnaked fang of lightning incinerating my moon-pale wings to crumpled cinder and ash now your memory resets itself every night / a button clearing the trip odometer back to zero / dim absinthe fizz of radium-green glow from the dashboard half-lifing a midnight rollover from omega to alpha to omega I remember when you told me (maybe I was three?) I was mentally damaged like the boy across the street / said you’d help me pass for normal so no one would know but only if I swore to obey you / and only you / forever now your memory fins around and around / like the shiny obsessive lassos of a goldfish gold-banding the narrow perimeters of its too-small bowl coming home from school (maybe I was fifteen?) you were waiting for me just inside the front door / accused me of stealing a can of corned beef hash from the canned goods stashed in the basement / then beat me in the face with your shoe how do I admit I’m almost glad of it? that I’ve always pined for you like an unrequited love / though I was never beautiful enough for you / your tinned bright laugh shrapneled flecks of steel to hide your anger when people used to say we looked like one another but now we compare our same dimpled hands / the thick feathering of eyebrows with the same crooked wing birdwinging over our left eye / our uneven cheekbones making one half of our face rounder than the other / one side a full moon / the other side a shyer kind of moon how can I admit I’m almost glad of it when you no longer recognize yourself in photographs the mirror becoming stranger until one day—will it be soon?— you’ll look in my face / once again seeing nothing of yourself reflected in it, and—unsure of all that you were and all that you are—ask me: who are you? [Like this on Facebook]( [Share via Twitter]( Copyright © 2019 Lee Ann Roripaugh. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 24, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. [Roripaugh reads "#to my mother's dementia #kaze no denwa."]( About This Poem “‘#to my mother’s dementia #kaze no denwa’ is part of a series of ‘wind phone’ (kaze no denwa) poems inspired by a disconnected phone booth in Japan where people have been pilgrimaging to speak to their dead following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. I was so moved by this story that I began to wonder what it might mean to write ‘wind phone’ poems—poems addressed to what is irrevocably lost and/or disappearing, what has been forcibly taken or erased, what one wishes to save even if/when it can’t be saved. These poems have become a vehicle for me to consider and mourn mass extinction, potential environmental collapse, as well as more personal losses and traumas—including witnessing my elderly parents’ minds and memories rapidly evanesce from dementia like glaciers in a too-warm sea. In this particular poem about my mother’s dementia, which has lessened the severity of her undiagnosed mental illness, I mourn the ways in which she was unable to parent me. At the same time, in the reversal of roles in which I parent and care for her now, I’ve discovered a hard-won tenderness which—in the way of all things about to disappear in a crucial tipping point—I feel exists at the precipice of violent loss.” —Lee Ann Roripaugh [Lee Ann Roripaugh]( Lee Ann Roripaugh is the author of five poetry collections, including Tsunami vs. the Fukushima 50 (Milkweed, 2019). She is a professor of English at the University of South Dakota, where she is the editor-in-chief of South Dakota Review. The former South Dakota Poet Laureate, she lives in Vermillion, South Dakota. [more-at-poets]( [Tsunami vs. the Fukushima 50]( Poetry by Roripaugh [T]([sunami vs. the Fukushima 50]( (Milkweed Editions, 2019) "The Dream of Shoji" by Kimiko Hahn [read-more]( "For a Daughter Who Leaves" by Janice Mirikitani [read-more]( "I Ask My Mother to Sing" by Li-Young Lee [read-more]( July Guest Editor: Paul Guest Thanks to [Paul Guest](, author of Because Everything Is Terrible (Diode Editions, 2018), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read a [Q&A with Guest]( about his curatorial approach this month and find out more about our [guest editors for the year.]( [make a one-time donation]( [illustration]( [Small-Blue-RGB-poets.org-Logo]( Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit [Poets.org](. 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