I Wore this Dress Today For You, Mom

Kim Dower

• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781636280240
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Kim Dower's poetry has been described by the Los Angeles Times as "sensual and evocative... seamlessly combining humor and heartache, " and by O Magazine as "unexpected and sublime." Acclaimed for combining the accessible and profound, her poems about motherhood are some of her most moving and disarmingly candid. I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom is an anthology of her poems on being a mother—childbirth to empty nest—as well as being a daughter with all the teenaged messiness, drama and conflict, to finally caring for one's mother suffering from dementia. Culled from her four collections as well as a selection of new work, these poems, heartbreaking, funny, surprising, and touching, explore the quirky, unexpected observations, and bittersweet moments mothers and daughters share. These evocative poems do not glorify mothers, but rather look under the hood of motherhood and explore the deep crevices and emotions of these impenetrable relationships: the love, despair, joy, humor and gratitude that fills our lives.

CLIVE CHRISTIAN No. 1

The cosmetics lady sprays me
with the world’s most expensive perfume
as I pull open the heavy glass door
Neiman’s, Beverly Hills. I’m here to buy

a gift, she sprays me with notes of plum,
pineapple, white peach—it’ll linger twenty-four hours
it’s what Katie Holmes wore the night
she married Tom Cruise—now on me,

jasmine tangerine headachy, smelling
like Katie under the covers, imagining
Tom in the bathroom not coming
out. I keep nuzzling my wrist as I browse

through men’s scarves, falling in love
with myself, wondering if I should’ve worn
Clive Christian No.1 on my wedding night,
not residue of Bain de Soleil left from the day

poolside in Santa Barbara. I’m still searching
for my signature scent: rose oil tinged
with poison, weekend aphrodisiac, forbidden
sweat. I remember how I used to test

my mother’s, kept on the blue depressed-glass
tray on her dresser. I’d spray up into the air
of her bedroom, wave the fragrance onto my face,
think how my friends’ mothers were perfume-free,

used cold cream, Vaseline, never smelled
more than clean, and on the way out, empty
handed, she zaps me again, this time she hits me
with bergamot, lime, Sicilian mandarin, thyme,

it’s what Sylvester Stallone wears, she tells me,
it’ll linger at least a week, people backing away,
disgusted, as I exit through the main floor:
a woman smelling like a famous man.

GOODBYE TO JAMES GARNER

Fans loved him as Rockford, Maverick,
a man’s man, had your back, cool,
did the right thing. I loved him
for being Doris Day’s husband
in a movie I cut class to see,
fifth grade, played at the Riviera,
only old men and me during the day,
went alone, told no one, but I had a gigantic
crush on him, he was an OB/GYN,
she was a mom, marriage in jeopardy,
couples in movies stayed together in the sixties
while out there it was all falling apart,
women poised to flip their lives, months away
from marching into a world of miniskirts, riots,
shame, pillbox hats, flinging our boxy pink suit jackets
and pumps into the sunset, not even James Garner
could have saved us, and this week, now, more unrest
more wars unfolding, I’m stuck on the headline
James Garner Dead. When I was ten, I needed a man
I could count on—even one holding aces and eights.

NO ONE BLEEDS FOREVER

for Grace Paley

They sat on the bench—Washington Square Park
Grace and my mother, before I was born
my mother with my older brother,
Grace with her own.
Quirky, my mother told me, years later,
when I asked, she was so different before
she wrote her stories, before my mother
would move uptown into her new life.
They had the Bronx in common—the place
no one wants to admit they’re from.

Grace would wear these hats she’d tell me,
we had so much to talk about the babies, those feelings,
she was bossy, a young female writer, l950
sounds so romantic now, but Grace had to scoop
her children up and give them baths,
just like my mother, had to stick thermometers in them,
feed them green purées from jars, had rough hands
from washing out diapers.
And, like her characters, she had hope, just like my
mother who always believed, no one bleeds forever.

BIRTH

She can feel the bulk of him:
a three story home parked
under her rib cage.

She can feel them reach
inside her guts
to pull him out,

no pain, just numb tugging,
wet cries from inside
where he lived for nine months,

her tiny kangaroo
waiting like a wish
struggling to come true.

She feels him stretching out,
one last kick to connect them.
She will miss his breathing

into her dreams.
Will he miss her food
invading his?

She tries to picture life
after birth, after they take him
from her body,

her second heart
delivered into heavy arms,
paralyzed by the block

they shot into her spine.
At first, all she sees
are his long fingers,

nails razor-sharp, tissue paper
she runs across her lips
tasting the salt of life.

PREGNANT

In my dream last night I whispered in Meryl Streep’s ear
that I was pregnant. That’s great, she said, her eyes
searching my face. But I’m sixty, I whispered. Oh my,
she said, touching my cheek, asking who the father was.
My husband, I told her. Thank god, she said, but we parted
uncomfortably, me not even knowing her well in the first place,
so I had hoped to make a good impression. When I met the doctor,
I was unsure how I felt, would he be able to handle this kind of
older pregnancy, what kind of mother to a tween would I be at
seventy, would I still be doing carpool in my golden years, choosing
prom dresses from catalogs side by side with my medical
equipment journals. The horrors of old age juxtaposed with
cheerful youth seemed insurmountable and so I consulted
my best friend Janice. She was very blonde in my dream with
peach complexion, turquoise earrings, looked like a sweet
nursery school–teacher. She was concerned but steady,
asked me if I’d consider an abortion and I burst into tears,
the hot kind that burn as they roll down and if skin on your
face is already chapped from cold days of long walks those
tears are truly unpleasant, so we didn’t say the word abortion
again, not that I have a moral problem with it, but if there’s life
inside me I want to see what kind of life it is, I want to hold it
at the end of that long day, I want to make it grilled cheese,
swing it into the sky on a beach day, I want to read it Where’s Waldo?.

THE THINGS I DO IN MY CAR

no one knows
the things I do in my car

my traveling LA secret circus
cruising around lucky I haven’t killed anyone

that swerve to the left not looking must
be careful there’s something on my leg an itch

someone to my right looking in
you’re the only one I’ll tell but once I cried

reached under my skirt to feel I was alive
slow roll through the red

not even my therapist can know
the things I do in my car

skin-popping words onto my arm
tangerine juice rolling down my thigh

I solved a murder made love to a stranger
fell for a loser wet my eyeliner brush with my tongue

drove my baby to sleep years ago
I’d ride around at dusk waiting for his crying to subside

he screeched as I wound through the canyon
breathing in my future as he’d drift away

his fever dreams melting into Sundays spent
curling down the California incline watched the ocean

follow me north took my dress off cranked up the sixties
blasted the news out of the sunroof flashed

on the subway I used to ride back then stuck inside
suffocating black breezes no secrets no rays hitting me

no top down no windows just darkness grazing
the shoulders of strangers

hoping to get th...