In That Way

Let's workshop this poem about a mother who, faced with the growing addiction of her two boys, always finds reason in her enduring optimism to cling to the possibility that things will improve

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In That Way

Close to an 8-ball cut into one mother rail
on the jacket of Skynyrd’s Street Survivors
(frayed and faded by a dead father’s life),
the teen boys—in that thinning sliver before
tunnel vision cloisters them again—make
their dilated appearance in the kitchen glow
(conjoined by mistrust of solo-detour sniffs).

Blackhole pupils show the fool’s gold. Yet
the boys sparkle in that way that fills Mom,
stirring a big pot of what they will not eat
(only shift around in their frenetic voltage),
with hope—where there is talk, daylight
talk, of sports and crushes, school and jobs;
talk, as seasons turn, of kicking the habit.

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