Tag Archives: child

Using form: Pantoum: Susan Delaney Spear, ‘Matryoshka’

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Mother, I am your only child.
I breathe inside your painted walls,
I am your only child. A daughter.
I nest inside your wooden halls.

I breathe inside your painted walls,
I have never touched your face.
I nest inside your wooden halls,
We share an inside out embrace.

I have never touched your face.
In retrospect, I understand,
We share an inside out embrace.
I have never clutched your hand.

In retrospect, I understand.
I have never seen your eyes,
I have never clutched your hand.
We are stacked, a quaint disguise.

I have never seen your eyes.
I am your only child. A daughter.
We are stacked, a quaint disguise.
Mother, I am your only child.

*****

Susan Delaney Spear writes: “Several years ago, I realized that the Russian nesting doll could be a metaphor for the complex relationship I had with my mother. Still, I was unable to put it into verse. But then, when my poetry group was writing pantoums (the poetic version of nesting), I wrote “Matryoshka.” Sometimes the Muse waves her magic wand and offers a form which perfectly aligns with the content.”

‘Matryoshka’ was originally published in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily.

Susan Delaney Spear is a retired professor and poet. Her two collections of poetry are Beyond All Bearing and On Earth….(Resource Publications, 2018 and 2022). She is the co-author, with David J. Rothman, of Learning the Secrets of English Verse (Springer, 2022). She and her husband live in Tampa, Florida, where she writes and serves as the interim music director and organist at the First Presbyterian Church of Dunedin. You can find her at www.susandelaneyspear.com.

Photo: “Cautious Matryoshka” by backpackphotography is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

RHL, ‘Boy With Scab’

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The boy he’s always been still takes delight
In testing scabs on elbows, knees,
To see if fingernails can assert their right
To lift with satisfying ease
The lid from off the mystery healing box
And see the flesh beneath the skin
Where the wise body-mind slowly unlocks
Corpuscles and white pus within.
The hint of pain, like some itch that you scratch,
Is fun alongside look-and-see.
What does the boy do with that useless patch,
The scab? Easy: autophagy.

*****

Curiosity is a useful aspect of intelligence. This poem first published in Lighten Up Online (aka LUPO). Thanks, Jerome Betts!

Photo: “War Stories” by Noël Zia Lee is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Sonnet: J.D. Smith, ‘Elegy’

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We weren’t allowed the time to contemplate
What talents he in time might come to show,
What fame or wealth he might accumulate,
What love and other passions he might know.

We had, instead, the chance to see him crawl
And graduate to solid food, to take
Some wobbling steps that ended in a fall,
To hand an uncle’s dog a piece of cake.

To say more is to claim a flare’s bright arc
Could have reached high, though it had scarcely flown
Before dissolving in the larger dark.
We fall back on the facts, which stand alone.

He seldom cried. He used to point at birds.
And now he will be missed beyond all words.

*****

J.D. Smith writes: “I will not say much about this poem, as it is based on actual events. I took  liberties with details in following formal constraints, but the sense of devastation is unchanged.”

J.D. Smith has published six books of poetry, most recently the light verse collection Catalogs for Food Lovers, and he has received a Fellowship in Poetry from the United States National Endowment for the Arts. This poem is from The Killing Tree (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Smith’s first fiction collection, Transit, was published in December 2022. His other books include the essay collection Dowsing and Science. Smith works in Washington, DC, where he lives with his wife Paula Van Lare and their rescue animals.
X: @Smitroverse

Photo: “Sleeping Child Tombstone Baby Grave Woodlawn 115-1593” by Brechtbug is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.