SWEDISH DEATH CLEANING | Ingrid Andersson
My mother calls before 8am:
Be sure to take out my gold fillings
when I die, they’re worth something.
Promise me you’ll love my cat?
All night she pushes her precious little face
up to mine. Take the computer
any time—they just keep changing it.
I no longer mind, and promise all
she ever asks, though her little cat
is pushing up perennials in the back,
where weedy tangles overtake
her garden flowers.
You are my gold, I say, every day,
your precious self is worth
more than anything—and a
bright laugh escapes her lips
like the opening of a bud or
skip of a treasured child.
Ingrid Andersson is a writer whose debut collection, Jordemoder: Poems of a Midwife (Holy Cow! Press, 2022) was shortlisted as best book of poetry for 2023 by the Wisconsin Library Association and won second place in the Edna Meudt book award. Andersson’s poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net, selected as poem-of-the-month (Mom Egg Review) and for an Editor’s Choice award (Eastern Iowa Review). Her work has appeared in About Place Journal, ArsMedica, Intima, Literary Mama, Midwest Review, Midwifery Today, Plant-Human Quarterly, Wisconsin People & Ideas and elsewhere. Andersson has practiced as a home birth nurse midwife and healthcare activist in Madison, Wisconsin for more than 20 years. Learn more about her work on ingridandersson.info/