Martha Zweig

Migraine

Displayed under a cold washcloth, mother would moan,
“My head is worse. My head
is worse than a breadbox.
It is worse
than brussels sprouts, & worse
than the head of God, bulging with wars.”
Then God’s will despoiled & quit her.

Dangling from a hanging tree her preferred
earrings jittered, tinkled alarm: defamation
incipient somewhere, ignorant, out of turn.
Faintly audible even in her rhinestone egg-
studded bird’s
nest brooch recently distributed in my favor, the brawl
she was belle of still rumors on,

albeit too indistinctly now to carry much beyond the bureau.
Crack units, battering blitzes & nauseas that once
mounted to topple her!—but the rear detachments
of misery deteriorate. Seizing merely me, a few
grunts gripe & malinger, kick at my eyes in fits
of chronic demoralization:
nothing left of that brassy dame who grappled the pitiless legions.

MARTHA ZWEIG received her MFA from Warren Wilson College. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Vinegar Bone, was published in 1999 by Wesleyan University Press. She has also had a chapbook titled Powers published by the Vermont Council on the Arts. She has had poems published in numerous magazines and was a recipient of a 1999 Writer’s Award from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation.

“Migraine” appears in our Spring 2001 issue.

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