Bern Mulvey

Bedroom Eyes

I was seven
when I saw
my mother
naked at
the mirror.
She was stoned.
I watched
the tumble
of her hands
against her body,
the pale scar
that grinned
from her belly.
Her breasts
swung as she
swayed,
nipple-eyes
downward,
two dead
fish.

Did she see
me in that
doorway
about to enter
thin as a
needle,
or hear
my brother
in the kitchen
hungry and
crying?
Already we knew
her,
knew her touch
for what it
brought:
a white scar
on my wrist,
my brother’s
above one eye.

Bern Mulvey

has contributed to Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, FIELD, Agni, Cimarron Review, The Laurel Review, Passages North, Poetry East, and many other journals. His first book, The Fat Sheep Everyone Wants, won the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Prize and was published in 2008. His second book, Deep Snow Country, won the FIELD Poetry Prize and was published in 2014. He lives in Iwate, Japan.