Her Story told in Brain Fog

by Claudia M. Reder

She couldn’t remember much of the original story
and reached into her memory for clues.

In her story, a bird had something
to do with losing and finding her way.
It was late summer, almost autumn.
Winter would arrive by its end.

Once she had believed in amulets.
Now she believed the loss of them
was the impetus for her journey.

She had to tell how language failed her.
Reading, writing, creating poetry
was the life she had chosen
until the evil witch had canceled her subscription.

The witch who stole language
was spun from fairy tales and miserly notions.
Sadistic spells were her specialty.
She drove me off my land and dropped me in a desert.
I wasn’t used to plains, so there I was, no hills,
no mountains with ice-capped clouds.
as if everything good had been burned.
This drought of words, not just rain.

How Storytelling Found Me

An ombudsman calls to ask,
“Do you know anyone who can help people tell their own stories?
These people are sick of Bingo.”
I jump at the chance to gather for the love of language,
to be present in the moment,
to retrieve a memory, to laugh.
This is how storytelling found me. 

When people asked me what I did, I told them,
“I help people tell their own stories.”
On hearing that statement, one looked me in the eye,
paused, then said, “How do you do that?”
Another ignored me and discussed the weather.
The third said, “You are lucky. You know how. I have stories,
but I don’t know how to tell them.”

Earlier Portraits of my Mother

I used to write about my mother
as a cartoon-like fish, driving a car.
Her husband said she was crazy
and a terrible driver
and she believed him for a long while.

Then I portrayed her as a well-mannered crocodile
who danced on two legs and wore pearls,
stylish in her Miss Sony outfits,
and still didn’t believe in her beauty.

Yet, and yet, she never swallowed those pills
my psychiatrist had said she might.

I thought writing was safe if it stayed in a drawer.
To read these poems aloud would grant them a different life.

She persevered and lived long enough
that we could meet at 30th Street Station,
Philadelphia where I read her my poems.

I lugged a tote filled with writings.
We sat on the brown curved
wooden benches. We talked as adults
about her marriage, the divorce and her life after,
and then she took the train.

It wasn’t by chance that I showed
her these poems at a train station
when I knew she would be leaving.

Our future conversations
were orchestrated like a sonnet:
the theme and variations,
the volta near the ending, calm or tears,
usually over a meal, wielding
our visa cards as swords fighting for power.

BIO

Claudia M. Reder is the author of How to Disappear (Blue Light Press, 2019). Uncertain Earth (Finishing Line Press), and My Father & Miro (Bright Hill Press). How to Disappear was awarded first prize in the Pinnacle and Feathered Quill awards. Main Street Rag is publishing her next book, Dizzying Words. Retired from teaching at California State University Channel Islands, she recently moved to Pittsburgh, PA.