After Visiting Musée d'Orsay on the Hottest Day of July

Hannah dow

The intimacy    I remember      best from childhood
is my own tongue        licking vagrant
sugar               from the corners          of my mouth.

I remember,     too, the girl      in the striped dress
in a large          print of Renoir’s
Dance at Le moulin de la Galette
above the fireplace      we never lit.     I wanted
to be her,         to have            a woman—a mother—
drape   a determined arm       around my shoulder.

I still know her            face well,         how she evades
glances             from a potential           suitor,
and avoids,      too, the viewer’s          eyes.

I wonder what             hell she is        trying to forget.

The average human                 brain weighs
three pounds: about     the same
as a bag           of apples or                 small potatoes.

My mother’s    brain is that
minus   a cup                of sugar.

If the mind      is its own         place,
avoidance                                is the topography
my mother       and I                tread best.

The elephant grows     lonelier each year.

I used to believe                      forgetting
could be a        blessing.
Hearing her     call out,            again,
again    to her dead,
I know it  is not.

Hannah Dow is the author of ROSARIUM (Acre Books). Her writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in South Dakota Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Shenandoah, and The Southern Review, among other publications. Hannah is an Assistant Professor of English and creative writing at Missouri Southern State University and lives in Bentonville, Arkansas.