SPLITTING AND FUCKING

1

My mother
poor woman
somehow she was
always the victim
of splitting and fucking,
fucking and splitting.
For example
that last guy,
he was a split
personality.
He split all kinds
of things like
the front door,
Mother's flower pots; once
he even split
her forehead open -
blood everywhere.
But mother said
he could fuck,
so she kept him around
until that time
he really fucked
up at the movies:
"The Aviator"
was playing that day,
something in that
must have set him
off, but who
knows with split
personalities.
Anyway,
He start kicking
her so hard,
Mother screamed -
It must have been
ear-splitting
because they stopped
the whole movie;
the police came
and took him away.
That's when my mother
finally split
up with the fucker.

2

After that
you would think
she'd had enough,
but then her body
fucked her over
big time -
mutant cells
splitting and fucking
all over
her insides.
Too late
for the doctors
to stop it -
stage four,
even chemo
was useless now.
Fucking cancer
taking my poor
Mother's life,
she was only
sixty-two
and already
had to pack
it all up.
But how would she
divide her things
amongst her children
and the neighbour,
and more importantly
who would get
the only thing
she ever loved
in this fucked-up world -
the dog?

by Jodie HOLLANDER, in "The POETRY REVIEW", Volume 104:2, Summer 2014

(photographs taken from Internet; edited by Armando TABORDA)

(1st edition, 2014; 2n edition, 2016; 3rd edition, 2019)