Call Your Mother
By Anna Limontas-Salisbury
(For my mother, Evalena, and yours)
Call your mother
Call your mother because she loves you
Call your mother because she loves you
With an unguided love
A love you sought in her milk, smile and hum
A love you soon recognized
From the vent of her voice
To the ring of her laughter
Reaching ever for her scent whether
Splashed from a fancy bottle or her sweat
A love too soon
Tight around the collar
An embarrassing love
A “Don’t call my government name in these streets”
Kind of love
An “Oh mama!” love
Call your mother whether
She is fly or furious
Free or detained
Call your mother
Even if she don’t like
Where you live
How you live
And with whom you live
Call your mother to let her know, you’re alright
Even if according to her
No girl should be out past midnight
Even if you a girl damn near 50
Call your mother because the unthinkable
Is already gospel in her head
You are already drunk, drowned
You are already strung out, stripped
You are already robbed, raped
Ditched by the road
You are already lashed, lynched
You are already a gone girl
As gone as a gone girl can get
Laying with eyes turned up to glory
Call your mother because
She has seen it all
Like that time
She wouldn’t let you take your bike
Back to the city because
She remembered
That biker who arrived in the ER
With the bike through him
Call your mother
Even if she doesn’t understand
An equilateral equation
The Partition of India
Parliament Funkadelic
Faust, Faulkner, Frost
Baldwin or bell hooks
Black girls who rock
Black girls who riot, rampage
They, Them pronouns
Call your mother
Even if you don’t understand
Why she still dig The Rolling Stones
Her “Fight the Power” street shake
Her “Follow Me” House Music stomp
Her praise Jesus Sundays
Her sarong and head wrap Mondays
Her artsy, poetic crowd
Her “free to be me”
Her need to picket
Her need to protest
Her need to chat with every stranger she meets
Call your mother
Even if you don’t like
Where she lives
How she lives
With whom she lives
Call your mother
Listen to her tell that same story
She told you last week
Call your mother even when you have nothing new to say
Your breathing says it all, your sigh over the mundane
The nothingness of your life is soothing to her
School is fine
Work is fine
The kids are fine
I’m fine
It’s fine
Everything is fine
Call your mother
Allow her to hear
The crack of vulnerability in your voice
Call your mother because she needs to know you are ok
Even when you tell her you are
She knows when you are hungry, heart broken
Call your mother because even if she can’t fix it
Her hearing is a balm
She rubs salve over you in prayers
Call your mother
Even if she doesn’t
Understand that thing you do
That prize or accolade you won
Or were passed over for, again
She was, is, already proud of you
Call your mother
And forgive her
For she know not what she do
Call your mother
For her body
Showered and sheltered you
Call your mother because when
She is a gone girl
As gone as a gone girl can get
Her memory has left its fingerprints all over you
Call your mother
Not because you love her
But because she loves you
Call your mother
Call your mother
Call your mother
Anna Limontas-Salisbury is an educator, journalist, poet, writer, currently based in Harlem. She is a mother and Grand Diva to granddaughter, Brook-Lynn. Her publications include Women’s eNews, Emotive Fruition, Mom Egg Review, Roots. Wounds. Words. Writers Workshop, and COUNTERpult Reading Series. Most recently, she was the featured poet at Camperdown, a poetry series at Halyards in Park Slope, Brooklyn. She is grateful to Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon, Women Writers of Color, and Sweet Action Poetry Collective for keeping her writing chops alive and kicking.