​POETRY   
          

The annual gathering of the faithful.      -    Photo by Weebly.com                                    

On Jerry Day, I Look for My Mother
by Angie Minkin

​​​It’s Jerry Garcia Day in McLaren Park,
the annual gathering of the faithful.
Why am I searching for her here,
among devoted Deadheads
lost in a thick miasma of weed,
the pony-tailed men in bell-bottoms,
the skinny girls in miniskirts and boots,
tie-dyed bras, toting babies in slings?
 
My mother never listened
to the Dead, but she loved to dance,
and I loved the way she tapped
in the kitchen, demonstrating
the shuffle-ball-change, while
making meatloaf. I don’t remember
her dancing with my father. She died
before she could dance at my wedding.
 
I imagine her twirling in a wheelchair,
next to old men spinning nearby.
Their shirts cast off, dayglow suspenders,
bright against naked chests, big bellies.
Wide grins as the music pours over them.
By now, she would be 105.
 
Is it the crowd grooving together
that calls her to mind?
Or is it that the dead tap
our shoulders every so often,
turn on a radio, make us trip over nothing,
stumbling into some other realm?
 
I search the crowd for my husband
while thinking of my mother.
Why are you smiling, he asks
when he finally finds me.

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​Angie Minkin is a coauthor of Dreams and Blessings: Six Visionary Poets. A poetry editor and contributor at Vistas & Byways Review, her work also appears in Birdland Journal, Motherscope, New Verse News, and the Pangolin Review, and will be forthcoming in the anthology Fog and Light. Angie has attended numerous writing workshops and is a member of the Marin Poetry Center, the Bay Area Poets Coalition, and the Academy of American Poets. When not writing, she practices yoga, takes dance classes, and travels to Oaxaca, Mexico, whenever possible.

Other pieces in this Issue:  
Poetry: 
Tow Truck Blues at 4 A.M.

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