Dog Food

Sometimes I want to mix in dog food with your food

saute it in garlic and onion

pour in eggs beaten in milk and cream cheese and voila!

Gourmet dish fit for kings and queens who send cake thieves to the gallows

Just a little, just a bit

to teach you a lesson that

mother does not mean maid,

meal preparer,

or mindless machine

She can’t always be the cheerleader cuz

Guess what?

Happy pills wear off

Mother is tired of looking for things that she’s missing,

feeling guilty for getting sick,

that second cocktail,

buying sad coasters that bow their heads in failure

Even now as you read this you think what?!? No!!! Dog food?!? Are you trying to kill me!?

Who do you think you are???

A person????

You are

ATM,

chauffeur,

nurse,

valet,

believer of bullshit

buffer of blame,

smeller of stinky underwear,

rememberer of things forgotten,

fixer of fractured walls and furniture

beholder of cliche body art, torn shirts, ripped jeans, the rift between time and space continuum

But nooooooo

Mother is also

artist, teacher,

stickfighter,

gardener,

meanderer,

human;

she cannot always fix what’s broken

Mother is sick of this paradigm we’ve mimed for centuries, her body mimicking mothers before her who grew calloused egos, displaced ids, wallowed in drink and self annihilation thinking

this,

this?

This is okay.

About filinthegap

Lani T. Montreal is an educator, writer, performer, and community activist. Her writings have been published and produced in Canada, the U.S., the Philippines and in cyberspace. Among her plays are: Nanay, Panther in the Sky, Gift of Tongue, Looking for Darna, Alien Citizen, Grandmother and I, and her most-toured comedy drama about gender and immigration, titled Sister OutLaw. She is the recipient of the 2016 3Arts Djerassi Residency Fellowship for Playwriting, 2009 3Arts Ragdale Residency Fellowship, the 2001 Samuel Ostrowsky Award for her memoir “Summer Rain,” and was finalist for the 1995 JVO Philippine Award for Excellence in Journalism for her environmental expose “Poison in the River.” Lani holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Roosevelt University. She teaches writing at Malcolm X College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago and writes a blog called “Fil-in-the-gap”. (filinthegap.com.) She lives (and loves) in Albany Park, Chicago with her multi-species, multi-cultural family.
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1 Response to Dog Food

  1. Geraldines says:

    Akap kita! Kaya natin ito… ♥️

    Liked by 1 person

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