My Mother is a Contestant on The Golden Bachelor ~ poetry by Joanna Theiss

My Mother is a Contestant on The Golden Bachelor

The first episode is crowded, the names a confusion
the women a kaleidoscope of sparkle, bangle, and tit.

In their moments on camera, they sing to Gerry,
claim aging is an honor, show us their throats, tell him their signs.

My mother isn’t the one in the low-cut gown
arriving late on a motorcycle.

She’s not the one daringly wearing
sensible shoes in a display of put-on practicality.

She doesn’t get a tragic backstory, a suddenly-dead
life partner. She doesn’t have a quirky habit, a surprising skill.

In the final scene, the women are displayed like carnations
at the grocery store, paid for but not yet picked.

My mother stands in the back row, third from the left.
Tiredness creases her dress. Her constricted mouth is familiar

from family dinners after soccer, ballet, violin
when my father griped that she overcooked his steak.

On screen, Gerry’s glass of orange juice overflows.
In his living room, my father crunches ice and asks me what happens now.

If Gerry gives Mom a rose, she can keep playing
for true love. Her last decades will be Gerry’s, lake-front in Indiana.

My father farts and adjusts his bad hip in the recliner
and mumbles a prayer to the gods of network television

that Gerry forgets my mother, the bold streak of gray rounding her temple,
and offers a rose to the therapist from Florida instead.

Gerry’s bounty spills over while my father is alone in this saltbox house,
a gassy seeker of second chances.

It took pancake makeup and shapewear, a nonstop to Los Angeles,
for him to notice

my mother is the foundation, the concrete and rebar
keeping his house from sinking into mud

but even foundations require support
a warm hand, a thank you, a cup of chamomile brought without being asked.

Gerry’s eyes glisten as he holds out the last rose. The music swells,
the women tense, my father holds himself still

listening for a limo to curve into the drive
and my mother, blistered from her night in three-inch heels

to limp inside and find my father, blooming with commiseration
for her loss

but hoping she might accept
him: browning, overwintered, but green, below the bark.

Joanna Theiss (she/her) is a lawyer-turned-writer living in Washington, DC. Her short stories and flash fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Peatsmoke, Bending Genres, The Florida Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Fictive Dream, and Best Microfiction 2022. Links to her writing are available at www.joannatheiss.com.