E. Ethelbert Miller has written the piece as a block of prose, but first presents a quote:<\/p>\n
Whoever said men
\nhit harder when women
\nare around, is right.
\n– Yusef Komunyakaa<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAfter, he follows with the piece:<\/p>\n
You push the door open not knowing<\/em>
\nwhat to expect. She sits in a chair next<\/em>
\nto her hospital bed. Just sitting. How long?<\/em>
\nBefore you can even enter the room a big<\/em>
\nsmile of recognition kisses her lips before<\/em>
\nshe kisses you. Her seamstress eyes survey<\/em>
\nyour clothes. You’re a rhinestone of a son<\/em>
\nslipping between her shaking hands. As the<\/em>
\nsparkle leaves her eyes she withdraws under<\/em>
\nher hospital robe. So small she looks. So <\/em>
\nsmall she is. You want to leave but you just<\/em>
\ncame. It’s just you and her. You’re overmatched.<\/em>
\nHer moods change so quick you can’t avoid <\/em>
\nher jabs. There’s bitterness in each blow. She<\/em>
\nhas you against the wall. You’re fighting with<\/em>
\nher again. This is sick you say to yourself.<\/em>
\nYou want to leave but the bell never rings.<\/em>
\nYou’re trying to love her too much. You’re <\/em>
\nlosing another round.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I began the piece without first reading the quote that precedes it, and, after rereading the piece with the quote, I was given much more insight into the route Miller was giving his poem.<\/p>\n
The prose is offered as an observation from the point of view of a man with his hospitalized mother. She has some sort of sickness that makes her forget things, most likely some stage of Alzheimer’s, and, instead of making her weak in this moment, Miller sort of paints her image as that of a fighter-but not a fighter against what you would initially believe.<\/p>\n
He writes the piece as if the son and mother are fighting against one another, and for what reason? My thought is that he would do this to describe exhaustion as something more tangible, more physical.<\/p>\n
I found the line, ‘You want to leave but the bell never rings.<\/em>‘ to be very hard-hitting when paired directly after with, ‘You’re trying to love her too much.<\/em>‘<\/p>\n
Miller is basically saying that there are many ways to look at how this sickness is affecting everyone’s life so greatly. I could feel in my body the expression of just being over wanting to do something in this piece. Just-just being tired, you know? The feeling of exhaustion in this prose was so well-written that, even though it isn’t one of my favorites by Miller, it still stuck in my brain. He almost needed a separate sense besides the five he was given to describe the way both characters in the piece felt, and he nailed them as characters themselves.<\/p>\n
This piece was honestly just so overwhelming. There was so much going on, and Miller added many underlying descriptions that built the characters he was talking of, for example the lines about the mother’s seamstress hands shaking, then the comparison following, talking of how her hands let the son slip- none of these descriptions were directly needed, but they added so much to the story he wove within these lines.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
E. Ethelbert Miller has written the piece as a block of prose, but first presents a quote: Whoever said men hit harder when women are around, is right. – Yusef Komunyakaa After, he follows with the piece: You push the door open not knowing what to expect. She sits in a chair next to her … Continue reading “Boxing with Your Mom”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5379"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5382,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5379\/revisions\/5382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}