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Carol L. Gloor
I am a 63 year old attorney living
in Chicago. I’ve been writing all
my adult life, and about 25 years
ago published poetry in early
feminist journals such as Black
Maria, Primavera and Metis, then
later in small journals like
Korone, Libido and River Oak
Review. Thorntree Press published
my chapbook, Giving Death the
Raspberries, in 1991. As someone
famous said, “aging is not for
wimps.” I want to tell that story,
and everything else I have left to
say.
I am a 63 year old attorney living
in Chicago. I’ve been writing all
my adult life, and about 25 years
ago published poetry in early
feminist journals such as Black
Maria, Primavera and Metis, then
later in small journals like
Korone, Libido and River Oak
Review. Thorntree Press published
my chapbook, Giving Death the
Raspberries, in 1991. As someone
famous said, “aging is not for
wimps.” I want to tell that story,
and everything else I have left to
say.
Carol L. Gloor
Baptism
The ladies were named
Martha, Lorraine, Lillian.
They wore dresses and smelled like lilacs.
I sat on their laps.
They brought green jello molds, meatloaf and
macaroni casseroles to the church basement
potlucks, and told my mom
she’s a little thin, let her have more.
Three years before, my mother and father
had stood upstairs together, by a wooden font,
both 26 years old, married a year, offering
me to the water, the blessing,
answering the ancient questions:
Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior,
put your whole trust in his grace,
and promise to serve him as your Lord?
Answering together, like all of us
not knowing what was and is to come,
answering We do.
Learning to Read
I’m skinny and wan in my kindergarten pictures,
lost in the snowsuit leggings my mother
makes me wear under my skirt, for warmth.
Then first grade brings learning to read:
not slow accretion but epiphany: a fall from a donkey,
a blinding light in the word “going.” It begins and ends
with “g,” I pray silently, rolling the tip
of my tongue against my teeth,
rounding my lips forward, matching the letters
to the world I know. Going. To the butcher’s.
For Mama’s cigarettes. To the streetcar.
Then food begins to stick to me, color infuse my cheeks,
because now I am a knife—never mind how the books
of Dick and Jane, Spot and Puff, trash our West Side,
two and a half room, newly decorated life.
Never mind. I am Going.
I sharpen on whatever you give me.
My Mother’s Codicil
Her own mother died timely, at 87,
in the hospital, leaving swept floors,
the cups dried and in the cabinet,
clean towels in the bathroom,
so she thought it would matter when she wrote:
The wineglasses to Carol,
The hutch to Margie
The needlepoint picture to Ariel;
never knowing how soon would come
the crazy morning they moved,
when the picture got lost, the glasses broke,
and the cat my father finally allowed ran away;
never knowing how soon the Prozac would come,
then the staring alone in darkness
next to my snoring father,
the pills without number in daily plastic cubes,
the weight on her chest heavier, slower
to leave each time. She thought it would matter,
never knowing the chaos,
never knowing how soon.
Last Rites
A half hour before I said goodbye to my mother
I was ordered from the hospital room
by a large, tired woman,
for bathing and bed change, she said,
not saying it was so I would not see the pulled tubes,
shit stained sheets, the washcloth probing her armpits,
breasts, shrunken pubis, all the places where human skin
folds on itself, stinks.
Mama, I would have done this homely office for you,
would have been a useful worker at your bed,
not an ignorant smiling guest.
But the dark nation of science intervened,
so when I saw you last it was only your frightened face,
your body composed, straightened beneath the exhausted
blanket.
I was allowed to feed you applesauce.
In ninety-six hours you would be dead.
The ladies were named
Martha, Lorraine, Lillian.
They wore dresses and smelled like lilacs.
I sat on their laps.
They brought green jello molds, meatloaf and
macaroni casseroles to the church basement
potlucks, and told my mom
she’s a little thin, let her have more.
Three years before, my mother and father
had stood upstairs together, by a wooden font,
both 26 years old, married a year, offering
me to the water, the blessing,
answering the ancient questions:
Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior,
put your whole trust in his grace,
and promise to serve him as your Lord?
Answering together, like all of us
not knowing what was and is to come,
answering We do.
Learning to Read
I’m skinny and wan in my kindergarten pictures,
lost in the snowsuit leggings my mother
makes me wear under my skirt, for warmth.
Then first grade brings learning to read:
not slow accretion but epiphany: a fall from a donkey,
a blinding light in the word “going.” It begins and ends
with “g,” I pray silently, rolling the tip
of my tongue against my teeth,
rounding my lips forward, matching the letters
to the world I know. Going. To the butcher’s.
For Mama’s cigarettes. To the streetcar.
Then food begins to stick to me, color infuse my cheeks,
because now I am a knife—never mind how the books
of Dick and Jane, Spot and Puff, trash our West Side,
two and a half room, newly decorated life.
Never mind. I am Going.
I sharpen on whatever you give me.
My Mother’s Codicil
Her own mother died timely, at 87,
in the hospital, leaving swept floors,
the cups dried and in the cabinet,
clean towels in the bathroom,
so she thought it would matter when she wrote:
The wineglasses to Carol,
The hutch to Margie
The needlepoint picture to Ariel;
never knowing how soon would come
the crazy morning they moved,
when the picture got lost, the glasses broke,
and the cat my father finally allowed ran away;
never knowing how soon the Prozac would come,
then the staring alone in darkness
next to my snoring father,
the pills without number in daily plastic cubes,
the weight on her chest heavier, slower
to leave each time. She thought it would matter,
never knowing the chaos,
never knowing how soon.
Last Rites
A half hour before I said goodbye to my mother
I was ordered from the hospital room
by a large, tired woman,
for bathing and bed change, she said,
not saying it was so I would not see the pulled tubes,
shit stained sheets, the washcloth probing her armpits,
breasts, shrunken pubis, all the places where human skin
folds on itself, stinks.
Mama, I would have done this homely office for you,
would have been a useful worker at your bed,
not an ignorant smiling guest.
But the dark nation of science intervened,
so when I saw you last it was only your frightened face,
your body composed, straightened beneath the exhausted
blanket.
I was allowed to feed you applesauce.
In ninety-six hours you would be dead.
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