Heritage Speaker

What good is it to erect
of absence
a word
like radiator
when we've vents
that expel heat
as air.

When I teach my daughter
to speak
and build a woman
out of me
that is not her mother
but some propriety.

A treason of simple
subjects, I never had use
in Spanish for the word
barn
and then
"woke up and a horse
was staring at me." (Joe Brainard)

Softly-pureed,
cooled, this diction dumb
in either
tongue. But what
is a mother's warmth
if not her wit?

Bernadette "turns to me
in the shower" and says
motherhood is now
fashionable among
the girl poets. If so, I want
my hat, a feather in it.
Mallarmé's, in fact.