MATER DOLOROSA

In case you’ve any taste buds left, I wait for you to savor the apricot purée
before shaving the excess from around the corners of your mouth
with the spoon’s edge. Swallowing has become a thorny undertaking.
After a few spoonfuls you shake your head. No more.

The whiteboard across your bed names your carers: David, Esther,
Dr. Angeles, reading like characters that featured in your bible lessons
as we made our way down to St. Brigid’s on Van Ness. Your stories
about Eve, King Solomon, the Stations of the Cross revealed

what the Irish nuns charged with my First Communion skipped over.
A week later you no longer recognize me. Half-naked, you kick off
the sheets swaddling your legs; refuse the nurses’ swabbing.
Your gaunt body lingers, restless in the letting go.

HYACINTH

After it had bloomed
I found it keeled over,
reaching for the sun.

I cut back the flower stalk
with a butcher knife,
then shifted the bulb

from the forcing vase
into an old ceramic bowl
filled with water.

The oniony gleam that lay
just under its tunic
matched Marthe’s skin

as she soaked in the bath,
perhaps for hours.
Bonnard would sit

and paint her milky limbs,
her hips always tipped
toward the light.

Born in Hong Kong and raised in Manila and San Francisco, Christina Lloyd holds a PhD in creative writing from Lancaster University. Her work appears in a wide variety of journals, including Canadian Woman Studies, Hive, Meniscus, Poetry Daily, Poetry Ireland, Poet Lore, and The North. Her debut collection, Women Twice Removed, is published by Sixteen Rivers Press. She lives in San Francisco.