Two Poems by Brenda Taulbee

True North

Provence House, San Diego

After the toasts and cake and dancing
the wedding guests scatter like ants, weaving
dizzy paths back to their cars as we pack
up the bar trays, stack plates, fall to the task
of breaking down tables. I fold linens while
my girlfriend unwinds long strings of lights like
a maypole dancer, laughing and limber
as early spring, and over her shoulder,
through steam-smeared glass, I watch, unnoticed,
as my mother rolls up her sleeves, alone
and washing dishes and I am thinking
about how Polaris was not always
the North Star, nor will it always be.
It’s not even one star, really, but three.

Mother’s Reply:

When she was young, she was impossible
to punish. Unlike her sister, she’d never

scream. Never flail her fists and declare that
she hated me. No, when sent to her room,

she’d puddle, huddled on the other side
of that door as if she could crawl through it

and back into my good graces. What she
never knew is I cried too. On the floor

outside her room, listening as sobs
rocked her into phlegmy, hiccuping sleep.

How do you hold, gently, something so soft?
Like cornstarch and water, the minute you open

your fist, it turns to liquid again, something become
nothing, running through your open hand.

Brenda Taulbee is a queer poet, writer, and MFA candidate at San Diego State University. Her first collection of poems, The Art of Waking Up, was nominated for a 2014 Oregon Book Award. Her work has appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review, GRIST, and the Unchaste Anthology.