Share Your Post-Confessional Poems Here!
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I thought it'd be fun to share our post-confessional poetry.  Let's feel free to comment and discuss them! (or share links to your blogs)
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  • "My Mother Turns Fifty"  copyright2011AmyJoSprague

     

     

    t is a sunny afternoon, the light
    coming in yellow through her curtains
    that cut through the smoke.
    Cat Stevens feels like water inside my soul
    and then she switches it to Bread
    and hands me a dust rag.
     
    I dance across the green and brown
    carpet squares, I wipe the hazy walls,
    the stiff yellow furniture with the green
    and gold flowers, speakers as tall as I am:
    it is 1984 and I am my mama's bumble bee.
    I shine everything for her, everything
    is for her.
     
    She is young and laughing and beautiful.
    This is the age I wanted to be her--
    chain-smoking Dorals and sipping black coffee,
    no men for us, no dads
    she tells me to get dirty but stay
    in the yard as she folds new
    laundry from the Good Will
     
    I see her always moving, and I was a part
    of that motion, that current
    that music like water
    I used to find myself in her eyes,
    her brown eyes
    soft and warm and mischeivious;
    Not this woman
    with
    this dead stare,
    this woman
    who wrings
    her hands
    that push away
    empty tears, tears for shadows
    of the ones that hurt us;
    mother, too proud, too tired, too weak
    to play now at this life.
    Across the table I hear the invasion
    of The Guess Who singing,
    my favorite,
    She's Come Undone,
    she doesn't even hear it
    she stares blankly into the white walls
    she doesn't see me serenade her
    because there are tears in my eyes,
    because for a moment I missed being a part of her
    because I am the woman undone
    because
    of her
     
    and I wonder as the song continues
    why it was so much easier
    to lose fathers than a mother
     
    she sighs "men, men, men"
    and I ignore her loathing
    and I ache for the strong, solid woman she once was
    thirty years ago
    and I realize there are two types of people in this world:
    those who live by the instruments of their own soul,
    and those who live by that of others, never filling
    but constantly emptying.
  • a new poem about the death of my father, his alcoholism, and losing him but finding, somehow, peace and grace

     

    It's In the Little Pieces

     

    I catch you in reflections--the small ones

    that hint at a sense, be it smell or taste or touch

     

    the smell of your sweat, bent over the tractor

    the taste of Old Style on my small lips, just a sip

    the feel of your long arms twice around me

     

    a hint of pink in a blossom falling

    to the grass--your cheeks alive

     

    a light refracting on water, just a ripple--

    your eyes, blue, calling to me from somewhere I've

    vaguely dreamed about, a sanctuary of sorts

    where I was once somebody's

     

    then a reflection of myself, this body

    I am your limbs, your high cheekbones

     

    when it's quiet

    I see all the pieces of you

    I hear you as a hush behind me--

    a piece of home I'd forgotten in my dreams--

     

    I hear the wind from when we spread

    your ashes on the river, followed by pink petals

    we plucked from dark stems

     

    I think of you

    as mine, once briefly

    and I was yours and that

    makes my chest ache in

    some way its never known,

    it's deep and young;

     

    all the what if's

    what if you had stayed

    what if you had known the

    world you couldn't keep us in

    wasn't any worse than the new

    one you'd turn us over to

    that yours was so much more safer

     

    you tried to get us back

    you cried in front of our new

    dad, I heard you daddy I heard you

    from the kitchen, your soft

    shaking voice pleading

    drunk with a slurred tongue

    and this would

    always be enough for us--

    because it was the best we'd ever get

     

    you walked away

    you lived in your car, the last we'd heard

     

    I didn't understand myself then--I

    didn't know I was locking that

    piece of you inside

    because,

    for one clear moment,

    I was wanted.

     

    You tried to put us into pieces

    you could hold onto--

    faded photos of us

    in your wallet

     

    gentle, shy, scared father

    I loved you

    I loved you

    You're in all these little pieces

    around me and inside,

    never absent now

    as you rustle and hush

    through petals at my feet.

     

    copyright2011AmyJoSprague

  • Daddy's Game

     

    I imagine you must've shut

    yourself off somehow--the way

    you'd eventually teach me to do--

    before you entered my door

    like a king's shadow

     

    I hear the scrape of your jeans,

    your hands hot and big like swings.

    I'm young so I love you.  I do as you say.

    You blow smoke in my face.

     

    Now, here, I slip

    because you taught me how to shut off--

    how to die inside,

    and I have only memories

    of my body--

    fear, arousal, panic and pain,

    death around every corner,

    shh girl shh

    I hid so well I lost me

    in this confusion of a woman

    trying to bud from

    what's already been picked.

     

    copyright 2011 Amy Jo Sprague

  • Sue, this poem is extraordinary.  It resonates with me on so many levels.  Thank you for sharing.
  • Here is something I wrote about my Mother passing away - comments welcome -

     

    The Memory of my Mother  v2  8/22/09

     

    I have been losing you all my life

    In bits and chunks,

    Sometimes for years at a time.

    Gone from my days.

    Gone from my nights.

     

    When you actually left this life

    It was more not a blow to me -

    More like a puff of air

    Barely rustling the curtains.

     

    Practice makes perfect, so they say.

    I have been practicing my grief for decades.

    It is not fresh and raw.

    Rather seasoned, routine.

    All the sharp edges worn smooth.

     

    “How sad for you” a friend said,

    But I thought, “this is an old feeling,

    One I’ve become accustomed to.”

    I lost her long ago.

    How can I grieve

    Over losing something

    So insubstantial?