Friday, September 16
WHEN MY GRANDMOTHER BARBARA JEAN WAS DYING, MY MOTHER SAT ON HER BED AND PLAYED "HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN" ON HER GUITAR, BECAUSE IT WAS THE ONLY SONG SHE KNEW And this is also ekphrasis: the song plucked out of the guitar, held on a child's lap, sat on a sickbed. My mother shaping the air around herself and her mother: a small rain of notes. There is a house in New Orleans, she strummed not knowing her mother was dying. My mother with her short hair and tomboy name, beside her mother who went by Bobbie. Bobbie with her hair that waves like mine, resists the clip that holds it back. Don't wish your life away, my mother still says, words her mother, shadow-sick, said. If a person is a museum of rooms they've visited, inside my mother is a room with a bed, a guitar, and her mother who is not dying, only resting. It is called the rising sun. (Han VanderHart)