I only ask you kids for one thing,
my mother says, in her fed-up voice.
Stretched out on the sofa, one foot on the floor,
her arm thrown over her headache
as our record player screams
Tutti Frutti from down the hall.
Her hands cotton-gloved to cover the eczema,
three children peeling away the layers of her.
I only ask you kids for one thing. Let me have
this living room for one half hour of peace
so I can listen to Walter Cronkite
and just a few minutes without your 45s.
Her hair in pin curls, scarf tied around,
her blouse smudged with bananas and orange juice,
three children draining her brain of cognition.
After that sofa spent many years in a basement
in another city, we sorted through boxes piled
on its exhausted cushions. I asked her
what got her through. Well, it wasn’t church,
she said. Or even your dad and you kids.
It was Little Richard, that’s what it was.