Cathy Cultice Lentes
Red Pens
I’m grown now
a survivor
of childhood
and motherhood
my own children
growing going gone
but when I give
my aging parents
my new poem
freshly published
needing to hear words like
wonderful
clever
miracle child
I see two old school teachers
glasses hooked
on the ends of their noses
red pens poised.
Cathy Cultice Lentes is a poet, essayist, and children’s writer; author of the poetry chapbook, Getting the Mail (Finishing Line Press, 2016) and coauthor of the epistolary poetry collection, Stronger When We Touch (The Orchard Street Press, 2023). Cultice Lentes earned an MFA in Writing for Young People (Solstice, 2013). She is a frequent contributor to literary journals and anthologies with forthcoming work in Northern Appalachian Review and Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel.