Mom Asks Me to Write Her a Poem About the Sky

Christine Jones

Christine Jones

Mom Asks Me to Write Her a Poem About the Sky was selected as part of MSU Library Short Edition's call for submissions on the theme of "Home," in coordination with the MSU Broad Art Museum's exhibition "Where We Dwell." Christine Jones is from Cape Cod, MA and is author of the full-length poetry book, Girl Without a Shirt (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and co-editor of the anthology, Voices Amidst the Virus: Poets Respond to the Pandemic (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2020). She is also founder/editor-in-chief of Poems2go and an associate editor of Lily Poetry Review.

She wants to brag to her new assisted-living friend. She, who loves me big like the sky, who tells me look up when I'm in need of a prayer. She can't know I'm lost & starless in Delhi where there's a cow at every turn. Where a girl knocks on my car window. Can I learn to carry bricks on my head? A bushel of hay? I count each day in sugar crystals & fennel seeds. Underwater in a pool, the only place I can breathe—the world is smaller than it is. She can't hear this city chanting its six million hymns far, too far, from the blue of home.

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