Django Jane

My mother designed the floors

In the room

With the stripes

My mother would wear

Earrings and other jewelry

While she listened to music

In her office

And call me to come to her

So she could have me

Hold the ruler

While she ran her pencil

Down the clean crisp paper

Telling me that you start with rooms

And you move to houses

My mother fell in love

With men

With names

Like Dan

And with women

With names

Like Chloe

And with people

Who didn’t see themselves

In any particular way

And their names

Are the ones

I liked the best

Because they looked

The most like

What they liked

To call themselves

Kay and Luke

And Upton

And George

My mother told me

I didn’t need

To worry about my father

So I didn’t

And I didn’t meet him either

Not until I was thirty-six

And my father decided

To come to one of my readings

So he could ask

For his daughter’s autograph

My mother won every award

And then they invented a few more awards

And my mother won those too

And then my mother took all those awards

And donated them to a museum

Because she knew people thought

It meant something

That she won them

But it didn’t mean anything to her

Because the people who gave her the awards

Were not her kind of people

My mother went to college

And then she taught

At a much better college

Than the one she went to

And owned nice cars

Usually three at a time

And we would go driving

Right before bedtime

So that I could see the world

As it is when children

Are not supposed to see it

Because my mother felt

That I would need to grow up

Before my time

And she felt

That if she were wrong about that

There’d still be less harm in me

Knowing how night falls

And how far it goes

And the scope of it

My mother smoked

But never in front of me

And I could only smell it

In its after-effects

Like it had just left the room

Always her office

And sometimes the kitchen

If one of her clients

Was giving her

A hard time again

My mother lived a long, full life

And when I published my first book

She bought a copy

For everybody she ever met

And a few people

She’d yet to meet

And when it went to #1

I know she secretly believed

That she had something to do with it

My mother looked at the dedication page

When she was the only dedication

And my mother, who I had never seen cry,

Quietly excused herself from my presence

And went to the ladies room

Of the very fancy restaurant

We were having dinner in

And I pictured her in front of

The bathroom mirror

Simply touching up her lipstick

And not crying in a stall

Because her daughter

Acknowledged her in such a way

Because the latter felt too predictable

And my mother was never

Predictable

My mother made houses

And when she was done

She made cities

And a bridge

And two arts buildings

At two separate schools

One of which

Now bears her name

My mother led a quiet life

But she was the example

Of a quiet life

That lives on

Past so many lives

That were nothing

But noise