In a haunting refrain of imagined questions and answers, a mother speculates how her son, adopted as a baby, feels about the parent he has never known
'No one, no one at all' … silhouette of a man at a window. Photograph: Gari Wyn Williams /Alamy
Imagined Sons by Carrie Etter consists of a title sequence of prose poems, framed and interspersed by 10 poems shaped in the call-response form of the catechism. This week's poem is the third of these, and shares their common title A Birthmother's Catechism.
The narrator is a mother whose son was adopted soon after his birth. In the main sequence she describes a series of encounters with the now-adult child. This is not the report of a literal search, nor an effort to construct an identity, but a mosaic of the numerous possibilities of relationship. The meetings and sightings occur unpredictably, in all kinds of settings – a supermarket, a fairytale, a dark backstreet, a bus, a graveyard – credible but dreamlike spaces that are projections of inner consciousness. Funny at times, fast-moving and psychologically astute, these tiny monologues are held together by a narrative voice as seemingly self-possessed as it is candid.
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The narrator is a mother whose son was adopted soon after his birth. In the main sequence she describes a series of encounters with the now-adult child. This is not the report of a literal search, nor an effort to construct an identity, but a mosaic of the numerous possibilities of relationship. The meetings and sightings occur unpredictably, in all kinds of settings – a supermarket, a fairytale, a dark backstreet, a bus, a graveyard – credible but dreamlike spaces that are projections of inner consciousness. Funny at times, fast-moving and psychologically astute, these tiny monologues are held together by a narrative voice as seemingly self-possessed as it is candid.
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