I feed my mother tomato soup
And then my mother’s mouth is a coin purse
opening, a blown kiss, a parody. She wets
the bow of her lip with her tongue; she puckers,
a vowel is a vacuum, her front teeth rake
her bottom lip before another moue and lick.
Role reversal, I repeat, if repeat is the word
for voicing what your mom cannot in the voice
she passed down to you. I am still carrying out
this call and response, the avalanche
she launched when she carried me.
Role reversal, I say, and because she stays
my hand and the spoon and on a tablet writes
Poem, here I am, writing My mother’s mouth,
my hand and the spoon. Here I am, furious,
tender, writing it: tomato soup, on the wall
a pink sign— Neck Breather—it wrecked me,
this new name for the woman who taught me
what to call marbles and worlds, who is of mothers
a sun, a lioness. Poem, she writes. Precious
is the wrong word, but so is kryptonite.
opening, a blown kiss, a parody. She wets
the bow of her lip with her tongue; she puckers,
a vowel is a vacuum, her front teeth rake
her bottom lip before another moue and lick.
Role reversal, I repeat, if repeat is the word
for voicing what your mom cannot in the voice
she passed down to you. I am still carrying out
this call and response, the avalanche
she launched when she carried me.
Role reversal, I say, and because she stays
my hand and the spoon and on a tablet writes
Poem, here I am, writing My mother’s mouth,
my hand and the spoon. Here I am, furious,
tender, writing it: tomato soup, on the wall
a pink sign— Neck Breather—it wrecked me,
this new name for the woman who taught me
what to call marbles and worlds, who is of mothers
a sun, a lioness. Poem, she writes. Precious
is the wrong word, but so is kryptonite.
September 2025
Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University and co-edits book review for Plume. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, HAD, and Ploughshares, and her first collection of poems is coming out with Orison Books in February 2026. (Author photo by Otto Selles.)
Art: Ellen June Wright, Diptych #1306, #1509, watercolor on paper