my mother learned
to read in the bomb
shelter under the compost
bin
the Penguin
books with orange and blue
covers ended up
in my room wet
with mold the stitches frayed
from their naked spines
when I was
ten the earth
was
dark I was
happy she
said
in college on my bed
I opened
her swollen letters
a trail
of ants spilled
from the folds
some scrambled up
my fingers to re-form
their frantic
columns others fell
to the floor
to scurry like
shiny bicycles in
a circus
the blue
paper crumpled
I brushed
the masses from
my hands
they bit
back then
attacked
each other
the letter
seized in a
glistening
ball
I pulled it
apart the black
page stiffened
the words
spat out
limbs
more fell off
and more
to come
love
Mom
Amanda Nowakowski grew up in East Tennessee, then studied at the University of Tennessee and Leningrad State University before earning her doctorate in Russian Literature at UCLA. Her poetry has been published in The International Poetry Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Poetry/LA, The Mochila Review, Red Rock Review, The White Pelican Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Jacaranda Review, The Coe Review, War, Literature, and the Arts (forthcoming), and Amethyst Arsenic (forthcoming). She lives in Woodland Hills, California and teaches English at Viewpoint High School in Calabasas, California.
