Three Fragments
A Riddle, A Wound, and a System
Welcome to Roots & Branches and Memoir-ish Musings by Mel. This weekend, I have a few prose-poem fragments. Thanks so much for being here. Please consider a free sub - no paywalls.
A Riddle
A Wound
She heard the music from inside her womb: her mother's gospel songs, the radio's twang, the jukebox blare, the honky-tonk guitar. The shouts. Clank of bottles, and sugar taste of beer. She crept under her heart where she felt her mother's rocking laughter, or a surge of her fear. The grip of her dread. The clutches of her sobs.
A System
The State had a system for poor mothers, mothers who worked in textile mills, Conestee and Poe, Pendleton and Monaghan — carders and bobbin-winders — women who lived in villages along rail-tracks near mill-dams, waterfalls, in the rented shabby saltbox shanties of millworker daddies and mammas, who worked for meager pay. The State had a system for unwed mothers. Social workers urged, suggested, persuaded mothers to give up her baby. “The agency will find her a good home” they said. “A married couple will want your baby, and give her a better life” said the system, the agency, the church, and her parents. “Leave her here. Leave the paperwork to the lawyers. Only, sign — here”.
©Mary Ellen Gambutti
Thanks! x Mel
I love the way you create these scenes of these early (pre-birth) memories and your mother's plight, imagining what it was like for you and her.
The longing to belong...has driven me in directions good and bad throughout my life. Now, I study it and practice it and yet, under all the work the longing is still there so subtle and so strong.