Sunday Poem

AFTER LOUISE BOURGEOIS’ MAMAN 

eight arched arachnid legs
giant ice picks en pointe
joints knobby, ropey muscles twined
tight as a girl’s braids 

at once nurturant tent
rigid mother superior
gargantuan black
widow    how 

to flee this vault of exalted
expectation, detoxify
the paralyzing venom
of self-doubt   the porous 

space between
the sinewy legs of steel
unbarred but charged
with the force field

of your mother’s love how sharp
the bite of disappointment, nagging
disapproval     why can’t you sew
your own clothes like Elizabeth, practise

piano as regularly as Grace, help
in the garden like Carol Ann
summa cum laude not
enough, good manners never

good enough, and though
you broke free never out
from under the smothering
ambivalence of Maman, her power

to gestate, loom, enmesh

From Realignment (Palimpsest, 2015) by Ruth Roach Pierson