Vox Populi
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Lisa Zimmerman: That Blue
When the poet said blue city of bees
I was reminded of the blue cotton robe
my husband gave me, a shade my mother loved—
not exactly sky, not pale, or dense, and yet
a tiny bit celestial, in a Sistine Chapel sort of way.
What I mean to say is the blue robe made me think
of my mother, how she insisted that very blue
looked nice on me and so did pink and other soft pastels.
I wore black instead—black jeans, black t-shirts,
long skirts, chunky shoes—because I was fifteen
and she didn’t really know me
and neither one of us knew back then
I was practicing for her funeral.
Copyright 2021 Lisa Zimmerman
Lisa Zimmerman is a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Northern Colorado. Her books include The Hours I keep (Main Street Rag, 2016).
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what a turn in the poem…just the insistence of the compliment, how you should wear that color blue, that in itself is the hint of what to come…I love this poem. So honest, so true.
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yes, I love Lisa Zimmermans’ poems. She combines lyricism and practicality in completely original ways.
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I wonder how many of us mothers, daughters, mothers of daughters, will spend our lives trying to pick apart that relationship.
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Thank you for reading ❤️
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Saw the blue, sucker punched by the end. Mothers and daughters. So hard to bear that love and pain.
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Thank you ❤️
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What a goregous poem. What a goregous blue. What a sad doubl-edfged black.
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ahhh, mother /daughter relationships. I love the easy going flow of a brief moment, pierced with a sharpened blade. Your poem reads aloud like sweet water, that gently runs into an ocean, an ocean that the reader may interpret as she wishes. Beautiful, simply beautiful
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