Poetry by Maggie Wolff

Carl Wycoff CC




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Surveys, Maps, and Mothers: C

Cadastral
 
a registry of lands, a surveying of ownership, family registry 
of want and need—unmet, 
one mother unable to save her daughter 
from a husband’s fist, 
her daughter unable to save her mother 
from the gun, 
the two of them creating a landscape of ownership 
built to hurt and made to haunt, the land 
I still walk across

Cadastral map
 
marking all the ways a mother forever owns a daughter, 
the pulse under a wrist scar, 
an inability to say I love you without armor

Cardinal direction

my mother had four children and none of us could become her compass, 
surpass her original cardinal direction—the first, a son, was a gift 
she wasn’t old enough to appreciate, he grew to pull south, 
away from his mother—the second, the first girl, was born drunk enough to die 
but she didn’t and so she became our north—forced to be strong, a beacon 
before she even had enough light—two more girls followed, 
one east, one west, constantly pulling each other 
in tug of war, both always caught in a middle country not their own

Cartography

late-night laptop detective searching 
white pages, police records, blackholes of wrong people, 
almost relatives—MacDonnell, Cooney, Gallagher, O’Conner--
names of Ireland dotting a Chicago map

Central meridian

my mother’s 18th birthday, she asked for a rare steak 
and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue, furious hunger redcoiled 
through the three of us: grandmother, mother, and daughter, 
women asking for a burn, something meatier 
to get stuck in our teeth, the easiest distraction and release 


Clinometer

instrument used to find the slope of elevation or depression 
in surveying highways, land, and other areas, depression is a family slope 
on various trajectories, upward slope 
is finding the right antidepressant to keep things level 
but numb, suicide is the downward slope 
we fight against—my mother was on antidepressants 
when she slit her left wrist over the bathroom sink, her mother 
was or wasn’t on antidepressants 
when she pulled the trigger five years later 

Contours

lines on a topographic map joining points of equal heights, 
a game show prize wheel randomly spun 
until it stops somewhere I forgot, either by accident or choice--
my earliest memory flashes, interspliced film 
of grainy images—my mother, half naked and fully drunk, howl crying 
and stumbling as she fell into the hallway walls, 
and other adults or my teenaged siblings trying to steady her, 
dress her, and reach the front door, the house in murky 
movement until my mother disappeared 
to a detox facility—my sister’s earliest memory:
the two of us hiding from the sounds 
of our father beating our mother, and my sister, less than 3 years old, 
tried to get me, only 19 months younger, to stop crying 

Contour interval
 
elevation differences between adjacent contours on a map, learning 
young that only certain things are worth crying over 
and to hide it even then, a calculated refusal to cry as an adult, 
the elevation difference between my need for others 
and the learned instinct to erect walls

Control points 

fixed points of known coordinates, my grandmother--
born in Chicago, a single mother of three in the 1950s catalogue 
of hot-meal-on-the-table-by-5 housewives and husbands who provided, lost somewhere 
in what her nieces and nephews will only tell me was “a difficult life” 
with an ending we all know 

Coordinates
 
the found birth certificate of my grandmother 
and location of her gravesite 
with no documents of her existence in between, 
not even the obituary—she ghost lights my computer, 
a spectral ancestor

County

territorial division between husband and wife, 
mother and son, mother and daughter, 
sister and sister—mapped our counties 
and built then barricaded our cities 

Covenant

a formal and binding agreement in relation to land, our covenant 
spans generations, binds us to the worst of our impulses, occupies 
soil from Chicago to the Everglades

Culture
 
a man-made feature on Earth shown on a map, addiction--
a culture of thirst—passed from mother to daughter, a network of unnamed roads, 
I tasted vodka mistaken for water, 
watched my father bloody my mother, and learned to lie about home 
all before starting kindergarten; in my deepest binges, 
my drunk crying vibrates
the same tremble as hers—I silence myself—offering my willing throat to choke 
of bottle, my mother stumbling down the hallway to detox 
wakes me up on cold tile

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Surveys, Maps, and Mothers: D-E

Degree

all the miles between us 
can be plotted in degrees only when calculated from one fixed point (mother) 
to another fixed point (daughter), but the points remain moveable and unknown, 
an incalculable measurement 


Electronic distance measuring equipment

a surveying instrument measuring 
distances using light or sound waves, my grandmother and mother 
grew up in Chicago winters, wind biting cheeks raw, the dull sun 
in grey sky melted to mush—I grew up in the constant light 
of Florida, unbearably hot and bearing me down to the ground, 
the rush of wind 
clattering a hurricane roof soaked 
in a rain born for damage, and waiting 
for the eye to pass over us in silence 
before the storm wall roared and rattled again

Elevation

little girls learn to keep their heads elevated above sea level 
when there is never anyone there to save them, this measurement 
manifests differently for each sister now—an inability to ask for help, 
childlike denial of the past, dangerous impulsivity rooted in longing

Encumbrance

a legal interest recorded on a mortgage, my mother 
never had a mortgage, lived on short-term leases, raised 
restless unrooted daughters carrying anchors

Equator

imaginary circle around the Earth 
dividing the sphere in half, 
the personal equator dividing my life since the beginning was my name,
named Mary Margaret, but called Maggie as far back as memory reaches—the name 
Mary became associated with grief, a connection re-made 
when my mother would remind me I was named after her mother,
I would go by Mary as an adult to make it less confusing on others--
it has taken years 
to go back to my real name, an imaginary circle 
between my hemispheres 
when someone asks my name and I instantly hesitate before answering


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Maggie Wolff is a poet, essayist, occasional fiction writer, and first-year Ph.D. candidate at Illinois State University. She recently won an AWP Intro Journals Award for her poetry, and her work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Juked, New Delta Review, and other publications.