Brooding

By Shelby Handler

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My mother, with her long, ringless fingers, couldn’t  
knot the slippery gizzards to the fishing twine, but she tried.  

Still, I blamed her. For not being like the other mothers  
who bought hot dogs from the Albertson’s,  

sliced them in neat rounds, strung them to the lines 
of real fishing poles, studded like pink-boiled beads  

dunked into the dirty creek. The crawdads scurried,  
swished up silt to seize those lures, appearing 

eager to be stolen from their homes. Airlifted, plopped 
into a bucket. Those mothers knew how to trap  

innocent creatures. Those mothers put stickered notes 
in their daughters’ lunch sacks, baked cakes that weren’t born  

from a box. But I turned out fine. Taught myself  
how to cook, how to bake bread from scratch. Last month,  

I separated six yolks from their whites, the gold orbs cold  
in my palms. My mother, in from out of town, peered  

into the pile, saying, I can see myself in your eggs!  
I leaned over to see, and the convex portraits  

multiplied. A brood appeared. A hive comprised 
of her and me and me and her and her and me. 

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Shelby Handler is a writer, translator, and organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace. Recent work has appeared in and or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Poetry, The Iowa Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Redivider, Poetry Northwest, The Journal, Black Warrior Review Online, Four Way Review, and Southern Indiana Review, among others. Shelby received their MFA in poetry at the University of Washington-Seattle, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net.

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