Author’s Note: “Revision” appears in my poetry collection, The Ledger of Mistakes (Terrapin Books, 2023), about caring for my mother during her decline and death. Having worked as a hospice chaplain, I am well aware that the death of a family member often brings up what is left unresolved. In fact, sometimes the urge to rewrite history is almost irresistible.
Revision
Because after widowhood
and a second marriage,
you had five names,
(trochees linked by single stresses)
which you tried on
like skirts, blouses, jackets,
mixing and matching
according to your mood,
for different occasions,
a pile left on the closet floor—
three of the five for your license,
a different three for taxes,
yet another three for your will—
who but I to untangle the mess
when were you gone?
Because in the end
you left it to me to decide
who you were—what name
to display I meant to say—
on the two-person headstone,
bought so long ago,
half of which
had been blank for fifty years,
I made the last edit,
struck out the final trochee,
gave you back to Daddy,
God help you.
♦
Kathy Nelson has worked as an engineer, a teacher, and a chaplain. She holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers and is the recipient of the 2019 James Dickey Prize for Poetry (from Five Points: A Journal of Literature and Art ) as well as a Pushcart nominee. In addition to her chapbooks, Cattails (Main Street Rag, 2013) and Whose Names Have Slipped Away (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and her forthcoming full-length The Ledger of Mistakes (see above), her work has appeared in LEON Literary Journal, New Ohio Review, Tar River Poetry, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, among others. Website: https://kathynelsonpoet.com/
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