Clara B. Jones

LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER

Listen to Audio Version read by Jill Khoury.

My dominant hand has a mind of its own
nerves from my motor cortex no longer in control
of writing or eating or grasping small things

my white linen dress in need of repair
thread no longer catching a moving target
needles a thing of the past when cross-stitch was a habit

paper stencils
turned to decorative animals and abstracts
pride of a craftsman traded for fear of failure

every fine movement a random tremor
like green leaves fluttering
predictable, chronic

unstable on a stable frame
mimicking my father's early stage
when Parkinson's was just inconvenient

deciding to settle in his body, now mine,
an unwelcome boarder
a parasite

whose virulence increases by its own design.
My body a domesticated animal
an impaired vessel unable to change course.

Clara B. Jones is a retired university professor currently practicing poetry in Asheville, NC. As a woman of color, she writes about social relations and the moral dimensions of power. Erbacce, CHEST, Ofi Literary Magazine, Transnational, and 34th Parallel are among the venues her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in, and she is the author of the weblog, Ferguson and Other Poems About Race: A Chapbook (2015). In the 1970s, Clara studied with Adrienne Rich and now studies with the poets Meghan Sterling and Eric Steineger.