And I Also Forget

I want to believe again that 
the ending will be a completion,

of a life well-lived
of a life where your last memories are 
of the joys
of our childhood, 
of trips to your parents 
of Christmases 
of the shopping for them

of the magic of having a family

but when you called me just now
to ask if I might be over today and 
I reminded you that I was just there,
had just gotten home from your place,

I realized that you are losing 
those moments of joy specifically, 
that somehow you are 
letting them go first, 

perhaps because you have 
doubted so long that you might 
deserve happiness of any kind

and at home, I took one of your wigs 
out of the trunk of my car to wash,
moved the bag of catfood 
I keep there for you

and the wave of your loss 
washed over me

and I dropped the bag with the wig

and I also forgot joy

---

This poem is about my mom, Nancy, and one morning experiencing her dementia in, as it always seems, a new way.

The poem itself is written in a new way, for me at least. I am reading through A. Drzal’s new book Shotgun. His poetry is personal, conversational, and often centered upon a specific event.

His poetry is also direct and the punches the poems’ pack come from the insight into the emotions of these events.

When I am influenced from the poetry of another author and when I allow myself to drift into their style when I write, I always find the experience rewarding.

I don’t think, though, that for most cases someone would immediately connect my style with the poet that influenced me.

There are exceptions. I have a few poems where I am directly mimicking the style of another poet–Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins to name a couple.

Here I am trying to express the emotion of not just realizing, again, that my mom is losing memories more quickly, but that she is losing the memories of the joys she’s had in her life first, keeping the pain of certain memories much longer.

I tried here to avoid metaphor and lyricism–two things that carry weight in most of my poetry.

Instead, I experimented with stanza breaks around the natural context of the story here. For enjambment, I broke lines where they seemed to naturally break. Without concern for any rhythmic pattern, I wanted to make sure that they were not too long and that they broke consistently.

The structure of the second stanza has a clear pattern, where later in the poem I started to break around the word “and”.

And is a powerful word–a word that I learned early in grade school with which I should not start sentences.

And so, often in fact, I start sentences with it.

This isn’t out of defiance, more it is a way to create a sentence that is clearly a continuation though one where being on the same line (for a poem) or at the start of a new sentence conveys a difference beyond just continuity.

This poem also marks the beginning of a new project. I’ve launched a Substack called Sorry to Bother You, where I’ll be sharing poems alongside more personal reflections about my mom, dementia, and the gravity of love.

Here I will focus on the poem itself as an entirely separate focus.

PoetProjects will remain focused on the craft of poetry—images, rhythm, wordplay, and the choices behind each piece. Sorry to Bother You will tell the larger story.

The first post, Let Joy Not Be Forgotten, is live now.