Jenna Lynch



IDEAS ABOUT MOTHERS

It has nothing to do with you and you're walking around with the idea of mothers again, like Brakhage, lowering himself onto his naked wife's body in Wedlock House, her nipples glowing, his lips not quite sure where to go. He lights her cigarette, the scene flashes to the windowpane, the alarm clock reads midnight, or noon. Maybe he is remembering his mother, or not-remembering the woman who abandoned him at birth, how she looked up without crying, looked right into his face. How the voice probably never said What have I done? How there was no turning back and she never did anyway. Mother. Mommy. Wife. Woman. Bitch. Or as mother: scum, mold, the sediment of wine, the filmy layer in fermenting liquors that shows itself, rising to the surface. As an adult, Freud visited his mother every Sunday, he brought her flowers, he thought about her naked, scar on his chin that reminds him of her--how long until you realize you are no longer dreaming? A woman, driving her children into a lake, can't get her story straight, forgets to factor in the traffic lights, the empty streets, the timing of green to red, the permanency of green. She also forgets to drive quickly, rolls the car into the water, watches it drift. Decades later and she's lying on her back somewhere, maybe wishing she used the tub, or a baby pool, I guess they weren't old enough to wash themselves, she'd say. There are worse ways to go, she'd say. You are talking to your mother on the phone and you forget where home is, you have no memory. Her voice is so high.










Jenna Lynch recently graduated from the University of Maryland with a B.A. in English. She has previously been published in the University's independent literary journal That Far Down.







Current | Archives    Submit | Masthead    Links | Donate   Contact | Sundress