She said I didn't know you
couldn't either. My mother,
who knew which man was
circumcised and which
woman's laugh I liked

Light matches? No, we both
laugh, we couldn't. I
nearly flunked chemistry.
One day when my lab partner
didn't come, the Bunsen
burner stayed unlit

At Raven's I mangle four
boxes of matches and
can't admit I'm afraid
to be burned

I spent a whole year
dreaming of fires, my
mother up April nights
sniffing for smoke. She

once said You mean you'd
swallow it? But she never,
until this morning, talked
about her fear of matches,

startling as knowing she
has a down quilt from
Odessa in a closet I've
never seen. I tell her

I never lit a candle until
lights went out for two days
in a blue cabin in Maine
and then I lit it on the wood

stove that had to be kept
burning. I hardly slept. And
do you hate to kill flies?
my mother asks, like Columbus
discovering a new continent