• 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»Mothers and Children»Lisa Briana Williams – The Steamroller Tries to Remain Light

Lisa Briana Williams – The Steamroller Tries to Remain Light

0
By Mom Egg Review on January 13, 2022 Mothers and Children, Poetry

Lisa Briana Williams

 

The Steamroller Tries to Remain Light

 

It is too easy to say everything we were told about motherhood
is a lie. More true to say I absorbed nothing but goodness
until it came for me—that “goodness”—to wrangle with & prove
what else good may be. Each person inhabiting may be
is different—yet I try & try to find formulas: this honey for that
bitter room: that sofa to rest on a tongue. I have images of myself
as a child sitting quietly in a yard, abandoned & calm. But one
child in a yard is never another—all unhappinesses vary, as do all
childhoods, yards. Then why the persistent myth of sameness?
Mothers do blank. Mothers feel blank. Here’s what you need to fill
blankness. Here’s how not to sink into a growing field of meaning
less, so that you splinter and grieve. As if there were recipes to make
childhood without the muscles of an actual life. . . By the time
I have gathered the ingredients to resolve conflict we have already
gone past it—a new paradigm must be razed. Perhaps the best
I can do is be an animal emptied of my animalness and my
human filled with a humanity. Allow my magnitude to recede &
forever recognize more than I am ascertained. Not so much look for,
in her eyes, but see without weight. Though behind me there are these

tons of crushing feeling—


Lisa Briana Williams is the author of Gazelle in the House (New Issues, 2014) as well as two other books of poems. She lives and teaches in Kentucky.

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Previous ArticleGallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems by Susan Rich
Next Article Hilde Weisert – Belly

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.