By Maria Dylan Himmelman

Featured Art: Portrait of Kaitlyn (2018) by Erin Dellasega

Each generation learns from the previous
so said my mother who never left
the house. She would close herself up
in her bedroom for days, only to emerge
in a wig and a dress made of paper on which
she had sketched vague faces and landscapes
with fat pieces of charcoal and spit. Once
I thought I saw her in the street, a fur
hat and hooped earrings, eyes vacant
and no response to my call. Doppelgänger
she would say later, like the thick-boned
villager who helped load the trains
with mothers and daughters
and turned to the camera to swear
it wasn’t her.

Maria Dylan Himmelman lives in the Hudson Valley.