Christine Rhein: Poem for Lisel Mueller
I’ve turned toward dream again, endless steps,
sky without voice, as though the music of birds,
or my mother singing, never happened.
Linda Parsons: The Other Side
To unlock my Akashic records, I speak my name three times to the psychic, echo the spell that flew Dorothy over the rainbow, farther still, home to sepia Kansas.
Lisel Mueller: Place and Time
My life began
with Beethoven and Schubert
on my mother’s grand piano
Dorianne Laux: Spirit Level
I see how my whole life has been a dream,
one she built for me from the ground up,
her daughter, my mother the axe, beautiful
tool with which she shaped me, a house
much like the one she lived in, but smaller
Desne A. Crossley: Alzheimer’s and Missing Love (2015-2017, 1996 & 1950)
Watched the movie Hidden Figures (when the first black women worked in the Nasa space program) and almost cried. My father was a rocket scientist, something I didn’t realize until his brain was already gone to Alzheimer’s.
Ma Yongbo: Three poems for Helen Pletts in English & Chinese
No one can walk here,
save shy deer, save wind and rain,
save those invisible wings
that can gently lift the whole garden
up to the constellations.
Carol Moldaw: Arthritis
“Save your hands,” my mother says,
seeing me untwist a jar’s tight cap—
just the way she used to tell me
not to let boys fool around
Naomi Shihab Nye: Generations
At the end of an unseasonably warm day
New Year’s Eve 2017
I stood in my kitchen holding
one wooden spoon.
Robbi Nester: Delicious
For me,
love has to rise like bread dough, worked until
it has a tender crumb. It’s not simple, though maybe
simplicity might come, if I work hard enough.
Philip Terman: Two Poems
our daughter
rubbing softly and deeply,
her knowing hands breathing
into the pain their love
Betsy Sholl: Haibun | Tarantula
Our creature, named Slash, also bulked up. He had a taste for crickets we fed each week…
Alexis Rhone Fancher: Three Pantoums for My Sister
Enough already! My sister says..
I can’t bear to watch you anymore.
I know she’s right. But I can’t stop.
I mean where would I put my sorrow?
Desne A. Crossley: A Wallflower and Her Mother
Clueless about west coast Whiteness, for sure. For my anxious mother, this meant I needed her singular brand of watchful encouragement to grow into a whole person, a whole woman—and to be taught some street smarts for life in suburban Palo Alto with its unfamiliar patterns and pitfalls.
R.S. Ramirez: Losing My Mother to Trump
Implicit, of course, was the narrative of us and them, of being a certain kind of immigrant compared to the rest. She blended in perfectly, and as her child, I did the same.
