Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 20,000 daily subscribers and over 8,000 archived posts.
John Samuel Tieman: Tintype
I was young when I shed my history
like the skin of something unpleasant
only later did I open my bureau drawer
and go through the ancestors one at a time
in this tintype with no name
she half-laughs at a joke just out of sight
a woman from an age of hats and hair
married to my great-something
my mother said the story goes
the woman was crazy and cut off the ear of a son
they put her in somewhere forever and the family
moved away from all that or so the story goes
—
copyright 2015 John Samuel Tieman
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I hope you don’t mind me saying, your words are classical and elegant,-very old school. It’s really beautiful because it’s pleasing for the lips to read, and pleasing for the imagination to paint the picture… and then, to top it off, you’ve ignited my curiosity and I look at this from the point of the writer, subject, and recall topics of discussion from my training as a Social Worker, like gender issues, family bonds, and family dynamics. I guess this was a pleasant trigger for me!
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