Tonight's Poet Corner: Mother Incarcerated

Mother Incarcerated
by Belinda Roddie

disturbing, isn't it -
how a man in a robe
can sentence an angel
to nineteen years,
and the angel's daughter

rages at the wall - she claws
at the plaster, tears its face
off with her fingernails,
strip the rosiness from its
flaking cheeks, destroy

the tattoos it left behind
in childhood, when
all it did was smile
when all it did was smile
when all it did was smile