Poetry: “Trying to Describe My Mother’s Relationship to Me” by Anna Abraham Gasaway
Anna Gasaway is clearly exasperated and frustrated with the dynamic she presents in this poem; the brilliance is in the accessibility of the examples she provides. Since a wide audience can have a varied level of exposure to all kinds of media, but Gasaway covers her pop culture bases, and adds interest and curiosity into the language and structure of the poem itself. Most of the world knows Batman and the Joker, but Gasaway gives us a couple more cultural touchstones, just in case. And if we’re total luddites, the exact emotion is cleanly expressed with “Your gravity terrifies / me.” The impact of “gravity” as a descriptor of another human being gives us all we need to know about the relationship and its inescapable force. As Gasaway comes to conclusion in her final line, it feels “futile.” But we have her humor, her inventive translation of this experience. The Joker still has to take the subway. Batman has a really cool car.
Trying to Describe My Mother’s Relationship to Me
I am Batman to your Joker, Mary Ann
goody-goody to your sexy, glittery
Ginger; Bruce Banner to your Hulk smashing
everything and everyone around you;
Spock’s logic to Captain Kirk’s outbursts; I
am boring you say—that’s what I’ve always
wanted. It doesn’t mean that I have not
been drawn to your way of life like Jean Luc
Picard to the Borg. Your gravity terrifies
me, your attempts at assimilation are futile.
Anna Abraham Gasaway
Anna Abraham Gasaway (She/Her) is an emerging, stroke-surviving, disabled writer published in Zone 3, Cream City Review, Poetry International, Anti-Heroin Chic, One Art and others. She received her MFA from SDSU and serves as an editorial assistant for the Los Angeles Review. She will publish a chapbook of poetry called My Mother's Husbands with Finishing Line Press in 2025. She can be found on BlueSky: @annagasaway.bsky.social, Twitter/X at @Yawp97 and IG: annagasaway.
