Burden: the word I knew so well so young by Diane Funston (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

Burden: the word I knew so well so young
by Diane Funston

Mom is made of glass
hollow and fragile
ready to break.
I was a daughter
of another mother—
her own
I grew up in a waterfalls city
both cistern and fountain
towards and away

Raised by grandmother
Mom was relieved of the burden
a word I knew so well
it surprised my first-grade teacher

We had cats when I was little
Mom baby-talked to
They were bid hello and goodbye
when she entered and left rooms
I was given the silent treatment
cats spoken to with exaggerated volume
hurt my ears and my heart

I never bonded as her daughter
She was a puerile
rebellious sister at best
Grandma was vanilla sugar love
died too soon in my adolescence
I became Mom’s parent
always in those roles

I forgave her years ago
accepted her revisionist apologies
believed after I raised three sons well
I could ease the winter of her elder years

She lives with us now
rescued from a senior high rise
New York State winters
threats of the plague

So little conversation
silent breakfast/ lunch/ dinner
a car passenger without sound
staring straight ahead
Then tv time in evening
we watch Netflix series together
volume loud considering closed captioning
I welcome these now familiar
fictional characters
and consider them as family

PAINTING: Rain, Heavy at Times by Jane Wilson (2004).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem is bittersweet. It paints my mother as she always has been, an adult who never grew up or wanted the responsibility of motherhood. It also pays homage to my grandmother, my mother’s mother, who raised me and who I bonded to as mother.

PHOTO: The author (left) and her mother.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Diane Funston (she/hers) writes poetry of nature and human nature. For two years, she has been the Yuba-Sutter Arts and Culture Poet-in-Residence. In this role, she created Poetry Square, a monthly online venue that featured poets from around the world reading their work and discussing creative process. Her work has appeared in Synkronicity, California Quarterly, Whirlwind, San Diego Poetry Annual, Summation, Tule Review, Lake Affect Magazine, F(r)iction, and other literary journals. Her first chapbook, Over the Falls, was published by Foothills Publishing in July 2022.

Armaments by Suzanne O’Connell (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

Armaments
by Suzanne O’Connell

Usually my moat protects.
Armaments and slings
line my hillsides.
Projectiles and clay cannon balls,
metal guns anchored into rock.
Rope traps with spikes upward
greet the intruder.

My mother, the enemy,
was walled off from me by jungle tactics,
sophisticated weaponry,
dirty fighting,
and distance.

That is until yesterday.
A memory snuck through.
Like a Chinese box with magic openers,
one last slider, then a button,
Boing! I was open.
Unguarded.
Feelings of tenderness filled me.

When she made my lunch,
there would be two hardboiled eggs.
She would take waxed paper,
sprinkle salt and pepper,
fold it stamp-size and include
the little envelope with the eggs.
She didn’t have to go to that trouble.
The memory of that tiny parcel
cracked open
the hardboiled egg of me.

PAINTING: Eggs by Andy Warhol (1982).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I have written many poems about my mother and I’m happy to submit one that has a glimpse of positivity and gratitude.

PHOTO: The author and her mother at the Bridging Ceremony, the transition from Brownie to Girl Scout.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Suzanne O’Connell is a poet living in Los Angeles. Her recently published work can be found in Drunk Monkeys, Wrath Bearing Tree, Paterson Literary Review, North American Review, Poet Lore, and The Summerset Review. She was nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her two poetry collections, A Prayer for Torn Stockings and What Luck, were published by Garden Oak Press.  More of her work can be found at  suzanneoconnell-poet.net.

A Gift by Rafaella Del Bourgo (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

A Gift
by Rafaella Del Bourgo

Sometimes I remember to love how the moon organizes the oceans. Sometimes I forget to love. Sometimes I am so caught up being the wheel, whipped around by life, I forget to be the still center. Sometimes I remember her life — how kaleidoscopic it was, how quietly imperfect. Sometimes I remember her long illness, her death. I wear her watch and feel her pulse beating in my wrist.

My life, too, has been composed of tessellated bits: meals, trips, jobs, books, men I have followed like a gypsy, or one of those wind-up toys which hits a wall and careens off in another direction. Once, lying on the couch, my head on her lap as she brushed my hair, I heard her tell a friend, Sometimes I think this is not my daughter; she is so dark and beautiful, so bright and so brash, the gypsies must have left her on our doorstep. Sometimes I forget that she is gone.

I scuff along the beach for hours. Sometimes I hear a voice, a laugh. I look to my right and am surprised not to find her there. The wind blows black curls into my eyes which tear up. I walk around a small harbor, sand gritty between my toes, and halyards ring against sailboat masts. I see waves of wild foam, fragments of smoke-colored clouds against the sky, a bewildering blue. In passing, a woman, a stranger, hands me an unbroken shell. It is conical, silver and rose — the colors of dawn. Overhead, a hungry osprey on the wing. Wriggling in her talons, a fish. She will tear it to pieces for her nestlings.

PAINTING: Figure on Beach by John Miller.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem was written after my mother died, and I found myself walking on the beach thinking about her and missing her.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: Raffi and Mom, Los Angeles, around 1946.  It is so illustrative of our relationship.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rafaella Del Bourgo’s writing has appeared in journals such as Nimrod, The Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, The Adroit Journal, The Green Hills Literary Lantern, Caveat Lector, Puerto Del Sol, Rattle, Oberon, Spillway, and The Bitter Oleander. She has won many awards, including the Lullwater Prize for Poetry in 2003, and, in 2006, the Helen Pappas Prize in Poetry and the New River Poets Award. In 2007, 2008, and 2013, she won first place in the Maggi Meyer Poetry Competition.  The League of Minnesota Poets awarded her first place in 2009.  In 2010, she won the Alan Ginsberg Poetry Award and the Grandmother Earth Poetry Prize.  She was awarded the Paumanok Prize for Poetry in 2012, and then won first place in the 2013 Northern Colorado Writers’ Poetry Contest.  In 2017, she won the Mudfish Poetry Prize.  Her collection I Am Not Kissing You was published by Small Poetry Press in 2003, and her chapbook, Inexplicable Business: Poems Domestic and Wild, was published in 2014 by Finishing Line Press.  In 2012, she was one of ten poets included in the anthology Chapter & Verse: Poems of Jewish Identity.  Her full-length poetry manuscript, A Tune Both Familiar and Strange, won the 2023 Terry J. Cox Award and is to be published by Regal House.  She has traveled the world and lived in Tasmania and Hawaii.  She recently retired from teaching college-level English classes, and resides in Berkeley, California, with her husband.

The Argument by Jay Passer (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

The Argument
by Jay Passer

They’ve been at it for years,
my unborn sisters
who didn’t make it,
who roomed before me
in the hotel of the womb
with penthouse views
and oceanside access.

With a view of the earth
from the moon
mere astronomers
only dream about.

But there’s a rift going on
they can’t seem to resolve
about who gets control
of my body once I’ve gone.
I try to interfere
with a word in edgewise
offering the idea that it’s really a moot point
but they ignore me.
I don’t know why I bother.
Neither one ever breathed air in the first place,
conceived yet stillborn.

By the time it was my turn
the Taj Mahal had downsized to a Motel 6
off an I-5 exit
across from the 76 station
and a KFC.

Fresno? Bakersfield?
The argument resumes;
Shakespeare?
Coco Chanel?

I finally get their attention
vis à vis with Russian Roulette.
They don’t need to know
I’m short of ammo.

I suggest asking Mother dear
what she thinks about it.
After all, they must dwell in a similar realm.
Mom proves a quick study
in resurrection:

Silly girls!
That boy would sooner
refuse the Pulitzer
than spit his soul into a petri dish!

End of conversation.

Thanks Mom,
for quieting the crowd at last.
You make a damn good referee.

If ghosts had lips I’d buy you a whistle.

PAINTING: Motel, Route 66 by John Register (1991).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: The poetry of Jay Passer first appeared in Caliban magazine, alongside the work of William S. Burroughs, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Wanda Coleman, in 1988. Since then, Passer’s literary output has graced several anthologies and numerous print and online publications worldwide. He is the author of 14 collections of poetry and prose, and his first novel, Squirrel, appeared in 2022. His most recent work can be found in Don’t Submit!, Five Fleas, Fixator Press, Otoliths, Horror Sleaze Trash, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Piker Press, Poetry Super Highway, and Urban Pigs Press. A lifetime plebeian, Passer has labored as dishwasher, soda jerk, barista, pizza cook, housepainter, courier, warehouseman, bookseller, news butcher, and mortician’s apprentice. A native of San Francisco, he currently resides in Venice, California, with a legion of imaginary cats and some very real houseplants. His latest collection of poems, Son of Alcatraz, was released in February of 2024 by Alien Buddha Press, and is currently available on Amazon.

PHOTO: The author with his mother, Rose (1984).

For Mama by Vince Gotera (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

For Mama
by Vince Gotera

—Candida Gotera (1914-1976)

She was the voice I heard through the earliest wall.
She was the hand on my forehead when I was sick.
When I would go out with high school friends, she’d call
to me from across the street, saying “Come back,”

just to tell me, “Be careful.” She was the lap
I sat on when I was four, the comfy chair
whose arms would cradle you. Her hair, so black
when I was young, became feathered with silver

streaks just like my own hair now. When cancer
metastasized through her bones, she was never weak,
always a smile despite her pain. Her answer
to trouble was always hang on, weather the bleak

moments. Though she’s been gone almost 50 years,
Mama lives on in me: everything of mine was hers.

PAINTING: Mother and child behind the bouquet of flowers by Pablo Picasso (1901).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem was written in April 2019, as part of NaPoWriMo (national poetry writing month), where poets across the country and around the world write poems each day in April based on daily prompts. The two prompts I was working from and merging in this poem were “a poem of origin” and “a dedication poem.” I was very glad I was able to use those two prompts to write a tribute to my Mom. It was a pleasure to think of the best memories that would fit within the small space of a sonnet.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: This photo of my mom was taken in the Philippines during 1947, when she was 33.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Vince Gotera teaches at the University of Northern Iowa, where he edited the North American Review (2000-2016). He is the former editor of Star*Line, the print journal of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. His poetry collections include Dragonfly, Ghost Wars, Fighting Kite, and The Coolest Month. His recent poems have appeared in Altered Reality Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, Ekphrastic Review, Philippines Graphic (Philippines), Rosebud, and the anthologies Multiverse (UK) and Hay(na)ku 15. In 2024, Vince Gotera was named the fifth Iowa Poet Laureate, with a two-year term beginning on March 1, 2024. Visit him at The Man with the Blue Guitar.

Laundry by Valerie Bacharach (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

Laundry
by Valerie Bacharach

I think my hands, small nails and arthritic knuckles, resemble
my mother’s, but I can’t bring hers into focus,
think I remember her voice,
but memory is an old recording, scratchy,
words slurred, vowels lost.

My knees ache from bending as I heave wet clothes
into the dryer. My mother’s knees became bone on bone,
she feared stairs, curbs, her body unsteady, unreliable.

After my mother was unable to walk, cook, bathe herself.
After she existed in assisted living.
After rage and refusal scoured her mind of love.

I bundled her sheets and underwear and nightgowns,
took them home, on my knees before the washer,
the dryer, as if praying, as if looking
for remnants of my mother, for forgiveness in this daily task.

Photo by Airubon.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem began one day as I was doing laundry and realized my hands looked like my mother’s. It took me back to the last two months of her life, after two strokes shattered her life and she could no longer live on her own. I would take her meals, do her laundry, try to find some way to connect with her, to break through her anger at what her life had become.

 AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: This photo of me and my mother is when I was about 18 months old, my mother was only 24, and it was taken in our apartment in High Point, North Carolina, by my father.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Valerie Bacharach’s book, Last Glimpse, will be published by Broadstone Books. Her chapbook After/Life will be published by Finishing Line Press. Her poem “Birthday Portrait, Son,” published by the Ilanot Review, was selected for inclusion in 2023 Best Small Fictions. Her poem “Shavli” was nominated for Best of the Net 2023 and a Pushcart Prize by Minyan Magazine. Her poem “Deadbolt” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by RockPaperPoem.

Our Losses Return to Us by Bill Ratner (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

Our Losses Return to Us
by Bill Ratner

Long after other dreams
my mother comes back

like an ancient celebrity in a hotel
with an appointment secretary

Before you see her you need to know
she is in a very fragile state, says the man

I am no longer trusted
walled off by protocol

her papery skin, dry viscera
decades under the sod at Saint James Kingsessing

I need to tell her
how hard it was to do without her

Perhaps I am being unfair
a bit too needful

Promptly the dream slides away
like lamb from a meat slicer

PAINTING: Mother and Child by Pablo Picasso (1922).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My mother died of breast cancer when I was seven years old, so as I live my life and write my poems she occasionally appears in dreams, and I include her in the occasional poem. Hopefully I write about her, not in a maudlin, helpless manner, but lyrical and evocative, honoring her memory.

PHOTO: The author with his mother Dolly during a visit to Spider Lake, Wisconsin (Summer, 1952).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Bill Ratner is one of Los Angeles’ best known voice actors and author of the poetry collection Fear of Fish (Alien Buddha Press), the poetry chapbook To Decorate a Casket (Finishing Line Press,) and a Best of the Net Poetry Nominee (Lascaux Review). His writing has appeared in Best Small Fictions 2021 (Sonder Press,) Missouri Review (audio), Baltimore Review, Chiron Review, Feminine Collective, and other journals. A nine-time winner of the Moth StorySLAM, a certified grief counselor, and an officer in his union SAG-AFTRA, he teaches Voiceovers for SAG-AFTRA Foundation and Media Awareness for Los Angeles Unified School District. Find him at billratner.com and at Soundcloud, YouTube, Instagram and X (Twitter).

Salt by Joan E. Bauer (SPICES & SEASONINGS Series)

Salt
by Joan E. Bauer

Over a pot of boiling water, trying to breathe.
Mother tried remedies. The worst: forbidding salt.
We learned how little time it takes to grow
a goiter.

For years, I thought the food of the righteous
was tortilla soup, miso soup, lox & pickled herring.

When Jesus said,
You are the salt of the earth
to whom was he speaking?

The blessed, the disciples,
or those, from whatever tribe or country,
with thirst, with empty hands?

When Gandhi began the Salt March,
did he know where he was going,
walking from his ashram on the Sabarmati River?

Did he see himself at the mudsalt?
Did he know freedom would only come
after many years?

Once I floated on the Dead Sea,
between Israel and the West Bank under a broiling sun.

Bathers laughed in a dozen languages, painting themselves
with black mudsalt, until you could barely tell
one from another.

What I remember: my body’s buoyancy.

But that lake—without fish or plants—is drying up.
Already, sinkholes.

In a century, the Dead Sea could be gone.

But for now, you can float,
feel your body healing,
almost breathing free.

Previously published in The New People (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). 

PHOTO: Salt crystals by Detry26.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Growing up, I had asthma. The remedy then was breathing in steam and taking a whopper of a medication called Tedral that gave me the shakes, but worked on the wheezing. Memory and history came together in writing this poem, which first appeared (2009) in The New People, a publication of The Thomas Merton Center, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit that has been organizing for peace and justice for 50 years.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joan E. Bauer is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Fig Season (Turning Point, 2023), The Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2021) and The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008). Recent poems have appeared in Chiron Review, Paterson Literary Review, and Slipstream. Her work has been a finalist for the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry from BkMk Press, and has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize. She divides her time between Venice, California, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she co-hosts and curates the Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins.

highly spiced by j.lewis (SPICES & SEASONINGS Series)

highly spiced
by j.lewis

poets and spices
flavors and poetry
history and humanity
have come together here
in this humble shallow cupboard
at the south end of my kitchen

the ginger bottle swirls thoughts
from Eliot, Ginsberg and Paz
who hold quiet communion there
meditating Vedic verse
and nodding to amu nnadi
who likes his ginger beer
the way he writes to women
which is to say with sweetness
but still a little bite

cloves rattle sharply in their Malagasy tin
calling for the ‘tompon’ny kabary’ to come
use his gifted tongue to release
each carefully preserved meaning
into my easter ham

nutmeg and mace, mother and daughter pair
whisper to each other of Ezra Pound
and how he found the Moluccan life to be
scattered and disjunct
not unlike their own distinctive traits
debating what exactly he meant by
the drifting hedonist thing

paprika powder pouts
anxious to be out and off again
mexico to spain and ultimately to hungary
infusing a cream sauce the way
pilinszky mingled faith and disenchantment
in the same poem

every shelf its own library
of tastes and tongues and literature
i open the door cautiously
to keep the bottles from crashing over me
a bookslide, a spiceberg
a highly spiced tidal wave
drowning me with flavor

Originally published in Verse-Virtual.

PHOTO: Herb and spice wheel by Marilyn Barbone.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Standing in front of the open spice cupboard in my kitchen, reading the labels on the jars, it occurred to me that I didn’t really know much about the origins and history of what I was looking at. When I had that information, I decided to write a poem about the spices combined with poets and writers from the same area/country.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: j.lewis is an internationally published poet, musician, nurse practitioner, and the editor of Verse-Virtual, an online journal and community. When he is not otherwise occupied, he is often on a kayak, exploring and photographing the waterways near his home in California. He is the author of five full-length collections, plus eight chapbooks. Learn more at jlewisweb.com.

Walking in the shadows of knowledge, poem by Mathias Jansson (MY FIRST JOB Poetry and Prose Series)

Walking in the shadows of knowledge
by Mathias Jansson

The smell of old dust
ageing paper
and endless rows
of silence

Small paper cards
in wooden boxes
yellow by light
all the letters
in the alphabet
neatly written in typewriting

A summer in the shadows
of knowledge
three weeks filled with dreams
adventures and stories
caught between
the covers
of library books.

IMAGE: “Blossoming Almond Branch in a Glass with a Book,” by Vincent van Gogh (1888).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: As a teenager I worked one summer in a public library. I can still remember the smell and the special atmosphere of the library.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mathias Jansson is a Swedish art critic and poet. He has contributed with poetry to different magazines and anthologies as Maintenant 8, 10, and 11: A Journal of Contemporary Dada. He has contributed to anthologies from Silver Birch Press and other publishers. Visit his Homepage and Amazon author page.