Today, the Facebooks reminded me that this little volume turns three, which feels impossible and so long ago all at the same time. It will probably always hold a special place in my heart since it was the first voyage on the self-publishing journey, that involved a whole lot of learning curve in terms of formatting, designing, and editing my own work.
This was also, of course, the book that took shape in the year after my mother's death, and is in many ways, is about mothering in general, even the series of poems written before that awful fall, like the summer house and the science of impossible objects, but especially those written in early 2018 like the hunger palace and plump, and of course, swallow. The book always feels like a purging, a sort of therapy, and I'm grateful for that.
from THE SUMMER HOUSE
Soon, the baby is full of bees. Bees in the bathtub, bees in the bassinet. Floating the surface of your coffee each morning without fail, tiny wings sticky with cream. Who can be a good mother amidst all this hum, the summer house thick with hives. The lives you've given up to get there. Every tiny shoe, every tiny spoon slick with honey. Who can be a good mother to a child made of wax, even now softening in the sun.
