Three Poems – Anthony Ragler

 

Chaser

My mother tells me I look like the reason she started drinking.

When my father told us
That he was leaving, she searched thru
his things to find traces of the next woman;
A blonde strand of hair, as if to say:
"I don't need you anymore"

That night, she found a bottle of Hennessy,
started chasing my father down to the bottom of it.
These days, I can’t tell her sober from her slumber.
I just want to be the reason she wakes up again.

The day we drive to my first semester of college,
She is a slur of tears and alcohol
telling me this is everything she ever dreamed of;
I am becoming more than my father was—
leaving for all the right reasons.

In the car, I fall asleep drunk off my mother's approval.
When I wake up, I am in a hospital bed.

My neck, broken in four places.
The doctor wheel me over to my mother.
her bruises, the darkest shade of whiskey.
She has so many nerve damages,
I can see the last nerve she always claimed
I got on.
Tubes run through her entire body
A machine has to breathe for her.