Sugar
       

Secret boxes
and bags stashed

in the back
of a never-used oven

or hidden behind pillows
on her smoke-filled settee:

the chocolate cups
and fudge-filled cakes

she numbered
and guarded.

Soil-dark palmfuls
and mouthfuls,

moist and eyeless.

Confections
sweating in plastic,

crowded in the dark
beneath her bed.

Secret sugar
is sweeter and hotter.

Electricity licks
the tongue, a seethe

near suckling
that ruined her mouth.

Dear mother who starved
during the Depression

as rations snatched
her brother away.

Mother who hides
the sugar behind

the spoiled cream
of soft teeth,

and is never full.

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Copyright © 2015 Hadara Bar-Nadav All rights reserved
from Green Mountains Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission