and a mother.
Maybe they went shopping
and the mother never came back.
Maybe she returned
for a while,
but every time she reappeared,
she burnt something.
Maybe a couch. Maybe a bed.
Maybe it was the girl.
Maybe the girl
didn’t want to know.
Maybe she needed
to obliterate
the mother.
Maybe the girl
mutilated herself with
a freezer of orange sherbet crashing windshields
and/or edging toward Karoshi.
Maybe she rummaged rampaged
and/or hemorrhaged
for the mother.
Maybe the mother didn’t care what the girl did.
Maybe she howled
every night until she immolated.
Maybe the mother kissed the girl
in her dreams.
* First line of “Self-Portrait as Nostalgia” by Diannely Antigua
Pauli Dutton has been published in Verse Virtual, The Pangolin Review, Better Than Starbucks, Altadena Poetry Review, Skylark, and elsewhere. She was a librarian for 40 years, where she founded, coordinated, and led a public reading series from 2003 – 2014. She has served on the Selection Committees for The Altadena Literary Review in 2020 and The Altadena Poetry Review from 2015 – 2019. She has also co-edited the 2017 and 2018 editions. Pauli holds an MLIS from the University of Southern California.
Okay Donkey 