CARRIE RUDZINSKI

 

Mother of All Bombs


My mother born of a rib  
My mother a man-made crisis
My mother says I need to lose weight  
My mother waterboards in an apron on Sundays
My mother wants a grandchild  
My mother loves a fetus
My mother keeps a brain-dead woman as a baby incubator 

My mother plants a flag
My mother swallows a desert      
My mother smiles in our family photos from Abu Ghraib
My mother has big dick energy  
My mother stops to frisk
My mother buys the IDF ice cream cones cause she adores them 

My mother is the Mother of All Bombs  
My mother sips white woman tears in summer
My mother hates all Muslims equally
My mother is still looking for weapons of mass destruction 
My mother keeps 15 men in Guantanamo today   
My mother is still fucking the NRA 
My mother shot kids at Kent State  
My mother lit a city on fire to celebrate

My mother a War of Northern Aggression  
My mother a Trail of Tears 
            She wrote the textbooks
            She redacted the textbooks
My mother overthrows governments to Save The Gays 

My mother has a hard-on for abortion clinics  
My mother checks my genitals all lazy
My mother suddenly cares very deeply about the WNBA
My mother is arresting you for resisting arrest 
My mother crushes necks with her knees
My mother shot herself handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser 
My mother needs to speak to a manager please 

My mother believes everything she reads
My mother sucks her tummy in live on TV
            She prints a new gun
            She drinks the oil
My mother gerrymanders with her PTA
My mother pays for college with her bootstraps 
My mother got a new job as Secretary of Minimum Wage
My mother won’t stop gushing about her pedophile priest
My mother still prays like I could be saved 

My mother got drunk and dyed the Chicago River green
My mother builds a fence around the edge of her property
My mother so proud of her 23andMe
My mother wears a mask to every ICE raid on her street 

My mother Land of the Free
My mother so happy you moved back home
My mother screams like an American Dream 

Waikawau Bay

 

A paradise of oystercatcher hatchings; 
we climb the hill at sunset still in love 
with possibility. You stay up late with 
the infinite dark and trace the curves of 
plummeting satellites. A warm wind sifts 
the outlines of our wet bodies hanging 
on the clothesline. I wrap myself in salt 
and blankets and dream about the way 
you used to drunk mumble my name. 

Meditations in an Emergency
after Cameron Awkward-Rich

 

I wake up & no one I love will talk to  me  about  heaven.  Maybe  we’re  all  tired
of  death.   Of  crying  in  a  bathroom  stall   while  the  hand  dryers  shout  over
our  heaving  chests.   I ride  the  bus  and  watch  graffiti  flutter   past.   I   return
a library book,  witness snapdragons  rise, voice note my sister back.  An iceberg
festers   in   the   news.   Sunlight   smirks   across  the  carpet.  My  best  friend’s
daughter celebrates another birthday, and we shake our heads at the promise of
time. Like you, I thought there would be more of it. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carrie Rudzinski has performed her work over the past 20 years in seven countries and been featured in Bustle, HuffPost, Tedx, and Teen Vogue. She is the co-editor of Rapture: An Anthology of Performance Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand and the co-creator of Hysterical which won Best New Aotearoa Play at the Wellington Theatre Awards. Her work has been published in Landfall, The Spinoff, Stasis Journal, Sweet Mammalian, Catalyst, and Muzzle.

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