‘My Mother Rolls Us a Joint When She Visits Me in California’ by Rage Hezekiah

In poor light, bent over a squat kitchen table,
she lifts a rolling paper from the pack,
pinches it between thumb and pointer, slow
like a magician preparing to impress. I watch
the bright shine of her salmon manicure
crease the bottom fold, a gulley
for the substance. She removes a sticky clump
of medicinal grade bud from a wide mouth mason jar,
applies light pressure, sprinkling tiny pieces
across the furrow’s surface, like when
she sows the garden with alyssum and clover
each spring. Moving with acute precision, she twists
the ends of the delicate spliff closed,
lifts the gift toward freshly lipsticked lips
and runs her tongue along the paper’s crisp edge.
Kissing the tips of her fingers, she blesses
what she’s made us, reverent
toward the holiness in her own hands.

From issue #4: spring/summer 2017

About the Author
Rage Hezekiah is a MacDowell Fellow, who earned her MFA from Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Fifth Wednesday, Columbia Poetry Review, The Cape Rock, and Tampa Review, as well as other journals and anthologies. You can find more of her work at ragehezekiah.com.