Jessie Mitchell’s Mother Poem by Gwendolyn Brooks

Jessie Mitchell’s Mother

Rating: 4.6


Into her mother’s bedroom to wash the ballooning body.
“My mother is jelly-hearted and she has a brain of jelly:
Sweet, quiver-soft, irrelevant. Not essential.
Only a habit would cry if she should die.
A pleasant sort of fool without the least iron. . . .
Are you better, mother, do you think it will come today?”
The stretched yellow rag that was Jessie Mitchell’s mother
Reviewed her. Young, and so thin, and so straight.
So straight! as if nothing could ever bend her.
But poor men would bend her, and doing things with poor men,
Being much in bed, and babies would bend her over,
And the rest of things in life that were for poor women,
Coming to them grinning and pretty with intent to bend and to kill.
Comparisons shattered her heart, ate at her bulwarks:
The shabby and the bright: she, almost hating her daughter,
Crept into an old sly refuge: “Jessie’s black
And her way will be black, and jerkier even than mine.
Mine, in fact, because I was lovely, had flowers
Tucked in the jerks, flowers were here and there. . . .”
She revived for the moment settled and dried-up triumphs,
Forced perfume into old petals, pulled up the droop,
Refueled
Triumphant long-exhaled breaths.
Her exquisite yellow youth . . .

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Dr Antony Theodore 14 April 2019

good poem with a real taste.. tony

0 1 Reply
Dr Antony Theodore 09 March 2020

”Jessie’s black And her way will be black, and jerkier even than mine. Mine, in fact, because I was lovely, had flowers Tucked in the jerks, flowers were here and there....” very fine poem. tony

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Mahtab Bangalee 27 November 2020

Triumphant long-exhaled breaths. Her exquisite yellow youth... live long the beauty of Jessie Mitchell’s Mother// it's beautiful poem

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Kumarmani Mahakul 14 March 2022

"My mother is jelly-hearted and she has a brain of jelly: Sweet, quiver-soft, irrelevant. Not essential. Only a habit would cry if she should die.....o touching. Beautiful poem.

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Khairul Ahsan 27 November 2020

'Only a habit would cry if she should die' - very well said! Congratulations to the poet on the poem's selection as the 'Modern Poem of the Day'!

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Edward Kofi Louis 27 November 2020

" Her way will be black" ! Thanks for sharing this poem with us.

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Ratnakar Mandlik 27 November 2020

" her exquisite yellow youth " fantastic conceptualization. Well deserved modern poem of the day.

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The shabby and the bright: she, almost hating her daughter, Crept into an old sly refuge: “Jessie’s black And her way will be black, and jerkier even than mine. Mine, in fact, because I was lovely, had flowers catching poem

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