Home Sick
SUSANNA RICH
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Grandmother Mumchy’s alphabet of vitamins
doesn’t help, nor her sweater
into whose arms I step for leggings,
nor her garland of garlic,
like teeth, around my neck—
I bask in the mists of others’ coughs,
touch knobs, sit on toilet seats
to bring myself home, sick for her socks
full of roasted salt against my aching ears;
and her thermometer, cool in my armpit,
as if it were a spoon, and I her tasty meal.
Blinds drawn, buried in quilts, I
cough, sneeze, ooze into tissues
I crumple into ducks, snakes, puppies.
She waves her hands over them,
speaks magic words I don’t understand.
When I catch my death, she makes me
spit my apple into her hand, so she
can eat it for me, kill my germs in her belly—
Snow White’s stepmother in reverse.
Mumchy told me she always wanted
to be a doctor. And I, born in America
where Mumchy came to be free,
take for my need her need to be home,
sick for a life she might heal.
SUSANNA RICH is a bilingual Hungarian-American poet and translator, a Fulbright Fellow in Creative Writing (Hungary), a Collegium Budapest Fellow, and Distinguished Professor Emerita of English at Kean University (NJ). With two Emmy Award nominations for poetry, Susanna is founding producer and principal performer at Wild Nights Productions, LLC. Her repertoire includes the musical Shakespeare’s *itches: The Women v. Will and ashes, ashes: A Poet Responds to the Shoah. Susanna is author of five poetry collections, most recently Beware the House and SHOUT! Poetry for Suffrage.