by Lisa Dordal

April 3, 2001

My mother’s final correspondence was a postcard 
dated six days before her death and received  

the Monday after—the way postcards sometimes arrive  
after the traveler has returned. This one  

is from Graceland (a place I know she’d never been)— 
the photo of Elvis, half in shadow, half bright.  

Clipped to the card is a scrap of yellow paper on which I had transcribed— 
from a phone call weeks after her death—my father’s words:  

Sometimes alcohol attacks the heart— 
for him, a singular admission; and, too,  

that he’d known about the bottles—Years ago, 
he said. I found them years ago. Like me,  

had pulled away the books on the shelves in her study,  
to find them there—tucked by her own hand—  

like something nearly alive, waiting for her return.  
My father and I—each departing from that room—  

saying nothing to anyone. Her words  
on the card are cheerful—niceties about my recent visit—  

ending with: I have to cut back. She means  
from Campus Ministry—a committee from which she’s just resigned.  

The blue ink of her fountain pen is a random mix  
of dark strokes and light—as if my mother,  

noticing the fading, corrected with a firmer hand— 
giving the appearance of a small battle transpiring. 

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Lisa Dordal teaches in the English Department at Vanderbilt University and is the author of Mosaic of the Dark, which was a finalist for the 2019 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry; Water Lessons (April 2022); and Next Time You Come Home (forthcoming 2023), all from Black Lawrence Press. Her poetry has appeared in The Sun, Narrative, Image, The New Ohio Review, Best New Poets, Greensboro Review, RHINO, Ninth Letter, and CALYX.