Elegy for Our Once Bear Bodies
by Shagufta Mulla
The cub of me still remembers my mother,
fierce and easily found. We swam—became the river—
our brown bodies holding hordes of slick salmon,
no existential human hunger
to fill, our mouths & days berry-songed,
dripping the river red.
In this life, my quiet calls got stuck between
coyote teeth, steered me straight off
my mirage-
filled path as they, a desert pack—a family—
yip & sing over someone soft, still squirming
in their jaws.
It’s not until I’m among many
bellies that I unfreeze, realize my body’s
de-rivering.
There is now no sweet song at dawn or dusk
that I know, so I listen to tiny yips
from mom-filled mouths, learn how to tear & rip
slick tendons from bone
I never thought a red apron
in someone’s reel would make me miss Mom
by Shagufta Mulla
but the retro ruffles dripping down
this woman’s chest stopped me somewhere in the ‘70s—
strawberry jam boiling on the stove,
my tiny fingertips reaching up—reaching
out—waiting for cooled-off redness.
I didn’t want to be domesticated,
didn’t want to learn how to cook for a man
whose hands made ends meet, but separated
our faces. I don’t own an apron but I have
two pear-green velvet pot holders from Mom
that came with the words, Remember me.
Sometimes, when I take spaghetti off the stove
I put the warm, pillowy fabric to my face
until it cools, then open my eyes
to dirty dishes in the sink. An accumulation
of unwashed cutlery and cups seems to be a grief
language. These puddles of spoons—lakes of plates—
fill and overflow with soapy water
over the course of days, far enough back
in time when my small damp hands are in Mom’s,
and she shows me how to wipe them dry.
BIO
Shagufta Mulla’s poetry has been featured in Five Points, Harbor Review, Okay Donkey, and elsewhere, as well as in the speculative poetry anthology NOMBONO by Sundress Publications. She is a 2026 Merrill Family Charitable Foundation Fellow and the second-place poetry winner for the 2025 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards. Mulla is the art editor of Peatsmoke Journal and a veterinarian in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Find her on Instagram: @s.mulla.dvm.