• 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»Curated»Mother is Speaking»Barbara Conrad – Beauty Queen

Barbara Conrad – Beauty Queen

0
By Mom Egg Review on December 12, 2020 Mother is Speaking, Poetry

Barbara Conrad

 

Beauty Queen

Her shoes are bolted to the linoleum floor.
Practical flats, black and rubber-soled.

In a top drawer next to the sink, fistfuls
of used tin foil — no waste, no wishes.

Before she swapped her office job for a new last name
and this tidbit of a life, before she was my mother,

she might have been a beauty queen
(or a kindergarten teacher she once told me).

Now she stands at the window
dreaming of fairies with green wings

dancing on the lawn. I’m making this up — but look.
One is holding a martini glass. Another wearing
red lipstick, blowing kisses. I hear an audience
cheering for an encore. I hear my mother

at the sink, humming a tune I barely know,
watching violets grow wild in untended grass.

 


Barbara Conrad is author of three poetry collections: The Gravity of Color, Wild Plums, There Is a Field, and editor of Waiting for Soup, an anthology from her writing group with homeless folks. Her work has appeared in Tar River Poetry, Atlanta Review, Nine Mile, NC Literary Review, Broad River, Pembroke and numerous anthologies. Her subjects range from ironic takes on life to hard truths about social injustice, hopefully with a bit of attitude.

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Previous ArticleBreena Clarke – Mama Ascended
Next Article Awotunde Judyie Al-Bilali – Miracle Again

Comments are closed.

June 7, 2023

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

June 7, 2023

Raven King 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.