"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere."
--G.K. Chesterton
"The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred.../Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as much as you."
--Walt Whitman
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According to the Buddha, right speech is a statement that is timely, true, kind, helpful (connected to liberation), and spoken with a mind of good-will. Let us all try to observe this precept.
Tracy Koretsky is a poet, novelist, and literary critic who has won over 50 awards, including three Pushcart Prize nominations. Later this fall, she'll be taking over my poetry critique column in the Winning Writers newsletter (subscribe free). I've long been a fan of her novel Ropeless, a comic, poignant story about an old-fashioned Jewish mama, her mentally disabled son, and a dutiful daughter learning to follow her dreams.
Tracy's poetry collection Even Before My Own Name is now available for downloading as a free e-book in PDF format. Visit her website to order a copy. She kindly shares this poem from the book below.
Pietà
Just before the end we watched you there, stretched out across your mama’s lap, her strong young man, silent, cold;
your eyes closed. I leaned toward the screen when they showed Mary’s face, all the sorrow in the world in them stone eyes.
Newslady said some sad soul splattered red paint across your chest, across your mama’s face. I wondered if
it made a tear. Said the madman tried to break you apart with a hammer. Couldn’t do it though. Takes more than that,
I know. Don’t have to say nothing; a mother just knows. So I told him he might as well fall in love with a rich man
as a poor one. I told him, “You be careful,” you know. He promised he was. Got scared when I caught him
rubbing his throat. I made him see that doctor myself. That doctor. Had to wear a mask and robe just to see my son,
had to use gloves to touch his hair, straight and thin like a white boy’s. He hated to see me coming at him like that; he’d say, “Let me
see your face, Mama.” “No, son.” I had to say. Nearly broke us both in two. So I took him home. Hospital’s no place for a boy
to die. Quit my job, brought him cookies. He’d eat bag after bag; always offer me some. I wasn’t sure, but I ate anyway. Then
my boy would groan and curl. I knew what I had to do. Roll him over, untape the padding, soak the rag in the bucket, wring it,
wring it, pat on the powder with my gloved hand, saying “Never you mind, son.” My son.
If your Mama didn’t shed no tears it was ’cause she never had to powder your thirty-year-old bottom. Oh, I know you got your
reasons, ain’t for me to question in this life, but as a mother, you know, I gotta say: You wanted my boy, Lord? Then
you hold him near. You let his pretty voice rise up in your choir. You greedy for my boy, Lord? So bad you couldn’t wait
just thirty years? Then tell your mama to touch his hair without gloves, Lord, without masks. I never got to hold my baby
cool across my lap. Mortician made me pay extra just to clean him. Now, before you go and listen to someone else’s troubles
I want to say I saw that statue again: on a card at the Well-Mart. Opened it real fast. It said nothing, just…nothing. I took it home.
Put it in his drawer, under the paper. Put a lock on the door so I can sleep nights. Sometimes I wonder
if they got the thing cleaned off. I dream of rags in buckets of red, Mary’s stone hand wringing wringing.
