Gail Fishman/Poetry

How To Feel Life

The basement stairwell is dark, no ghosts in the corner where I go to smell my mother

in an old black file cabinet that holds her life, lost that February day as snow wisps floated

across the highway, cold angels promising to lay a coat by midnight.

I carry her keys, on a golden chain with a large brass C, insert one at the cabinet top,

wait for the welcome pop of the lock, metal against metal, it’s open.

The top drawer — bank files, an old business ledger, a stained satin book with raised pink

flowers, Our Baby’s First Year, my sister’s history in great detail down to the final ounce

in her bottle, mine beneath, jotted afterthoughts seven years later.

The third drawer — the death drawer, funeral guest book, cemetery plot papers, two glass

cylinders, seven-day mourning candles, one for her, one for Dad, empty save for burnt wicks.

The bottom drawer — jewelry, safe from intruders, my pearls, her pearls, my gold, her gold,

bracelets, earrings, filigree pins, all hidden under the death drawer.

I savor the second drawer, slide the hinge, pull it open, there it is. Her makeup case, red leather

(Red is life, she said, tie a red ribbon on your babies’ cribs). I unsnap it, inhale her stale

sweetness, pull open lipstick, remembering the sound she’d make as she smacked ruby lips

together, mwah, mwah, and then paah! she’d open her mouth, forming a wordless O

as if surprised. In a plastic container, pressed powder, a cracked circle. She’d reach over,

pat my nose with the soft pad. Why is your nose red? she’d ask, clogging my pores to bring on

next week’s rash. Put on some lipstick, she’d tell me then, you look pale, tired, you should rest.

Eye cream, blue to match her new polyester pantsuit, pants for a lady who’d always skirted up

for her man, her love who’d slipped away on another winter night.

She’d pull out the red leather bag at lunch, shared tuna at the diner, sugared pancakes at IHOP,

Kosher corned beef at the deli, I’ll take my half home, eat it later, she’d tell me as she prepared

her face to reenter her lonely apartment when I’d leave to ply the highway home.

I close my eyes, take another whiff, snap the clasp, lay it in the drawer of scents.

Next week I’ll return to feel her around me, hear her words, nice girls don’t shave their legs, 

stay away from Palisades Park, don’t let a boy touch your body, your nose is red, your lips 

are pale, you need rest you need rest you need rest.

I pull the key from the lock, push in the oval — click — and climb the stairs toward my life,

vow to change the bulb on the wall before my next visit to the place where I go

to smell my mother.

About the poet:

Gail Fishman Gerwin’s memoir Sugar and Sand received 2010 Paterson Poetry Prize finalist designation, and she earned four consecutive Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards honorable mentions. Her poetry appears in journals including Paterson Literary Review, U.S. 1 Worksheets, Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, Caduceus, Calyx, The American Voice in Poetry, and Lips.