Post-Inauguration Because our candidate—the woman—didn’t win. Because my son is in 7th grade and kids can be cruel. Because my son is biracial, I did not have the right words when he came home and told me that some kids…
Browsing: Poetry
Icarus Takes a Window Seat Your voice on the phone carries a rattle of beverage carts, seatbelts snapping, and the frenzied beating of your heart as you wait for the door to close and trap you. I would like to…
HOW TO SURVIVE A DICTATOR → Call your mother-in-law who lived through the Third Reich. She may tell you to keep a chicken, collect firewood from the graveyard, or burn the stamp collection for warmth. All of these are…
Poem for the New Year My daughter said she would go outside her comfort zone, would pull the string on a booze-bottle popper. When her hands didn’t burn, she popped another. Said she’d try harder at school, listen in History.…
Instructions for Motherhood Gut the herring. Cover your body in ash. Thorn with the blood that grows from the roses. Layer dirty linens with hot water and lye. Beat the caustic bleach that forms. Seed the ingredients for medicines and…
Winter Baby Tell me the truth, I said to my friend, who had just given birth. How bad is it? You won’t believe the blood, she said, for which truth, I am indebted. And January, especially, is no time for…
Sunflowers Just inside the gate, the rise and fall of dying sunflowers: disheveled petals and downcast eyes. Then a flick of wing and I realize a sparrow is locked in a kiss of life, face deep in the flower’s, seed…
Aleppo in the Heart of the Living Room Every soul needs a proper chaperone to say nothing of a champion. Especially after sloshing around this broken world. My heart lacks a tenant, though each chamber stands wallpapered and ready for…
Origami I’ve read about women who say they can’t write New mothers, their arms a cramped night, crescent They hold what they cannot yet tell. My baby was milky paper to me then, a smooth sheet, the inverse. But I…
IDENTITY A folio edited by Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach The poems in this folio consider the “Mom” identity from both the mother’s and child’s viewpoints and speak to the complicated relationship that exists between the iconic Mom and…