John Compton

the news slips off your tongue like hot soup

my mother is dying

(i prepare myself)

& not in the pretend way
i write, occasionally,

when she was a functioning
alcoholic, or when it made a poem

more interesting. my mother
is dying. her kidneys

rebelling, becoming cirrhosis.

she sits in front of me,

relays the information
with easy memorized lines.

she is used to the idea of dying.

death has loomed inside her
for years now, hibernating,

waiting for spring, to wake & fatten