• 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»Care»Ann Fisher-Wirth – Lebkuchen

Ann Fisher-Wirth – Lebkuchen

0
By Mom Egg Review on February 13, 2021 Care, Poetry

Ann Fisher-Wirth

 

 

Lebkuchen

There is more and more I tell no one
Jane Hirshfield

Once a week, my mother brought me home
to make Lebkuchen, my passion all that fall
because it would ripen while I was gone
and because it saved talking.
I spent hours measuring
and mixing
+++and shaping
++++++and baking
the bars stiff with dried fruit and honey,
and she let me pretend—
but pretend what? that I was helping
prepare for Christmas? She would
drive over to the Home and pick me up,
then, as we neared the house, I would
lie down on the floor.
Lucky for her, the garage
led into the house, where already
the kitchen curtains were drawn
and the bowls stood waiting.

.

Oh, love, why was I dutiful,
why was my mother afraid?
Why did I not carry my belly
proudly through the neighborhood?
You have been gone so long.
You would be fifty-five now,
lines around your mouth and eyes,
perhaps college, perhaps children,
a couple of marriages.
But past those weeks
when I laid Lebkuchen out to cool
on the cherry wood dropleaf table,
then packed it in tin after tin
until my mother said, Annie, it’s time
to take you back—past those weeks,
you never were, and your death
pulled me into the shadows.
That’s when they began,
the things I tell no one.

 


Ann Fisher-Wirth’s sixth book of poems is The Bones of Winter Birds; her fifth, in collaboration with photographer Maude Schuyler Clay, is Mississippi. Ann is coeditor, with Laura-Gray Street, of The Ecopoetry Anthology. A senior fellow of the Black Earth Institute, she has had senior Fulbrights to Switzerland and Sweden, and several residencies for poetry. She is Professor of English and directs the Interdisciplinary Minor in Environmental Studies at the University of Mississippi.

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Previous ArticleBruce Moody – The Embrace
Next Article Elaine Terranova – Tantrum

Comments are closed.

March 30, 2023

Yours, Creature by Jessica Cuello

March 30, 2023

Barnflower by Carla Panciera

March 30, 2023

Mother Kingdom by Andrea Deeken

March 30, 2023

Everything’s Changing by Chelsea Stickle

March 30, 2023

Dragonfly Morning by Elina Eihmane

March 29, 2023

Coming Soon–MER Vol. 21!

March 29, 2023

April Poem-a-Day Challenge

March 29, 2023

Poem of the Month – April 2023

March 14, 2023

Save the Date! MER 21 Launch Reading May 21 in NYC

March 14, 2023

MER Online Quarterly – March 2023

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

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