A Study of Set Theory with my Mother Disjuncted Adrien Wright

Each collected element must exist prior to the act of collection sets, tomatoes, or Gila monsters

— On this, we disagree.

P BENACERRAF

On the 13th of April 1961, this work was interrupted Here: all the things I am doing instead of calling you: { return. construct. arrange. Gila monster. Gila monster. Gila monster. { You cannot contain yourself, You do not contain yourself. }}

I have your curls. You cut your hair short when I did. I hang to your shelf, corkboarded, I exist before you. I will exist after you tomato tomato The choices made naturally very arbitrary.

J DOFF

Each fall — naturally I shave my head clean of you. In the sink basin {little knives of curl. little monster. little monster.} albeit a deviant or fragmentary or fragmentary

Mother, your gestures, your mother’s: There is no way to make this break clean. She contains. You contain. I cannot.

G BOOLOS

A Family History Of Dementia

KJ Kieras

or: when my grandfather’s memory goes, so will another memory of my mother, leaking honey ‘til all that’s left is an empty jar the first thing he forgot is which jokes he has told before, asking if my grapes are grapes of wrath even when i eat them three times a day i imagine he got the jokes from her, his breath held in anticipation of the last laugh it’s his way of telling me to remember let me tell you a story: she ran away at twenty to the mountains, working as a maid in a cabin a year after the cancer spread through her blood cells her lungs craved open air i see her against the blue of the sky snow melting on her open palm what strange grief is this? i unwrap my grief to find another grief my grandfather crying at the christmas party over my mom how he stepped off a plane and saw her smiling from the ground, arms full of two baby girls — my sisters. desperately rebuilding her with the sand of my grandfather’s memory, test running different versions of her laugh; someday, i’ll have to retell the story of her with my sisters in her arms and i don’t think i’ll do it right he stepped off a grief and saw her smile melting into the ground arms full of empty jars let me tell you a story: she ran away at thirty, or eighty to the desert, maybe the ocean working in a roadside motel, a gas station that smelled like honey 10 years before the infection spread, or

10 years after the sickness died her body craving a slow-heat infection i see her on a summer night, in the rain her skin lit up in the glow of the moon, or the hotel sign i had a mother once or maybe it was just the shape of her — my grandpa tells me she was something special; when i close my eyes to picture it, it’s’ all just honey she who left the party early she who went home to rest while my grandfather stayed for one more dance she left quickly the first time two days for her immune system to burn up now, she leaves my grandfather slowly, in the kindest way she knows how in a memory blink or wishful thinking my grandfather calls me his daughter laughs, and apologizes with a voice like a sink left running washing a memory clean someday, in an empty jar, he will dance with her again: spinning her and laughing as her skirt flares out, the taste of honey on his tongue, the rest of us staring in, breath fogging up the glass, his arms empty as he spins around the living room alone