The Machine

1.

In Mother’s room the breathing machine doesn’t stop.
Listening, I try to learn a lesson about love.
I’ll use it as long as it works—
her concession to me because she would like to be done
with it, the three-month prognosis an eternity to her.
When Mother was about to give birth to me
the doctor was late so the nurse yelled at her
to stop pushing and keep her legs together.
Now I imagine being in that half-state—
mother ready to release me: a room of first breaths.

2.

When they pick up the machine Mother apologizes.
She wonders if she is disappointing me by not fighting,
the disease so rampant she can barely move. When I try
to feed her she reminds me of the times she fed me,
each spoonful of oatmeal for a different family member.
She says they were so worried when I stopped eating.
In Germany they would have pinched my nose to force
my mouth open. That’s what they did to my uncle Norman.
So why didn’t you eat, she laughs, was life so bad? It’s dusk:
the room is quiet when she pushes away my arm.






Click here to listen to Stewart Florsheim reading "The Machine"

Stewart Florsheim was born in New York City, the son of refugees from Hitler's Germany. He has received several awards for his poetry and was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has been widely published in magazines and anthologies. Stewart was the editor of Ghosts of the Holocaust, an anthology of poetry by children of Holocaust survivors (Wayne State University Press 1989). He wrote the poetry chapbook, The Girl Eating Oysters (2River 2004). In 2005, Stewart won the Blue Light Book Award for The Short Fall From Grace (Blue Light Press 2006). He has been awarded residencies from Artcroft and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. Stewart also writes non-fiction.