The Mother of Guido Watts-Russell, Papal Zouave by Theresa Moritz She kneels outside there, waiting for your answer. May she ascend on her knees, tearing her silk stockings, the hundred rocky steps that will lead her into you? It’s a task she has, left to her because she does it well, until she can do it perfectly without succumbing to a certain weakness of the lungs shortly after. If you let her in, prepare yourself to be a shrine to find the stigmata growing in your palms. She does this to you, even when she’s gone. The feeling keeps starting low inside you and moving upward until it rests behind your eyes and looks out frightened for the way back down. She makes you serve as Lourdes or some other stony grotto of the ailing and you can no longer bend your own knees, you assume the substantiality of the rocks, and the children, without her, are dashed against you, even poor Guido, in his uniform of the papal zouaves.
Theresa Moritz is a poet and author who has not yet published a book. Her poems and stories have appeared in The Dalhousie Review, The Queen's Quarterly, The Iowa Review, Capilano Review, The Windsor Review, The Prairie Journal, Prism International, Canadian Literature, The Antigonish Review. She is now circulating a book of poems, In the Care of This Good Mother, and a book of linked short fictions, A Gift and a Baby Crying.
