• Home
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Links
  • MER Journal
    • Latest Issue
    • Back Issues
    • Subscribe to MER!
  • MER Online
    • MER Quarterly
    • MER Literary Folios
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Creative Prose
    • Essay
    • Interviews
    • Book Reviews
    • Craft
      • Authors’ Notes
    • Art Gallery
      • Special – Hybrids
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
      • MER 18 Virtual Reading – Voices From HOME
    • Currents
      • Announcements
      • Highlights
  • Shop
    • All Issues
    • One Year Subscription
    • Two Year Subscription
  • Submit
Facebook Twitter Instagram
Facebook Twitter Instagram
MER – Mom Egg Review
  • Home
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Links
  • MER Journal
    • Latest Issue
    • Back Issues
    • Subscribe to MER!
  • MER Online
    • MER Quarterly
    • MER Literary Folios
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Creative Prose
    • Essay
    • Interviews
    • Book Reviews
    • Craft
      • Authors’ Notes
    • Art Gallery
      • Special – Hybrids
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
      • MER 18 Virtual Reading – Voices From HOME
    • Currents
      • Announcements
      • Highlights
  • Shop
    • All Issues
    • One Year Subscription
    • Two Year Subscription
  • Submit
MER – Mom Egg Review
You are at:Home»MER VOX»Poetry»Poetry by Jennifer L. Freed

Poetry by Jennifer L. Freed

0
By Mom Egg Review on September 14, 2020 Poetry, Range of Motherhood

Jennifer L. Freed

 

“Have You Locked up the Knives?”

In answer to Ms. K, Department of Children and Family Services

Staples, thumb tacks, twist ties, tooth picks.
The tips of unfolded paperclips.
The spirals of wire binding her college-ruled notebooks.
Sticks. Stones. Safety
pins.
The seashells
she gathered last summer, if smashed
underfoot. Shards
of any water glass, jelly jar, ketchup bottle.
Tweezers
Earring posts
Fingernails

Don’t you see? My daughter doesn’t need
a knife.

(Published with the approval of the poet’s daughter)

 

Origami

—the paper cranes you used to make,
then unmake—
hidden flaps opening, exposing
fold on top of fold.

I never saw
the sequence of sharp creases
that made the bird a bird.

Now
you touch a scar
on your arm, now you say
a name—
++++++small offerings
of clues. You, pointing at angles
I hadn’t known
to look for.

I keep trying to follow
faint marks, foreign patterns.

Each time I think I have it right,
the shape I make does not match yours.

You snarl at what I do not know,
fall silent when I ask
you to tell me

(Published with the approval of the poet’s daughter)


Jennifer L Freed lives in Massachusetts. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in various journals including Atlanta Review, Comstock Review, Rust + Moth, The Worcester Review, Zone 3, and others.  A chapbook, These Hands Still Holding, was a finalist in the 2013 New Women’s Voices competition. She is working on a full-length manuscript of poems related to her mother’s cerebral hemorrhage in 2018.

 

 

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Previous ArticlePoetry by Nicole Hospital-Medina
Next Article Janet Garber – Baby Love

Comments are closed.

June 7, 2023

Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Tranquility, by Anna Laura Reeve

June 7, 2023

Raven King – Poems by Fox Henry Frazer

June 7, 2023

Wind & Children by Linda Scheller

June 7, 2023

Mother Country by Jacinda Townsend

May 31, 2023

MER 21 Online Launch Reading

May 31, 2023

Poem of the Month – June

May 19, 2023

MER 21 Launch Reading – Sunday May 21 in NYC

May 10, 2023

Poem of the Month – May 2023 (2)

May 10, 2023

Poem of the Month – May 2023 (1)

May 10, 2023

Jennifer Georgescu – Art

Copyright © 2022 MER and Mom Egg Review
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Submit
  • Contact

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.