*poof*
My mother made herself the deer with a broken leg We saw a deer through the pane into someone else’s yard. The leg moved like a tube sock pinned to the hip and half filled with sticks. I did not like to see it suffer, either. She was upset —my mother —that no one helped the doe. Was it a mother, too? As if we were the first to observe the scene. We weren’t. All had been told to let her be. My mother had suffered a destruction of the self, a divorce, and no one cared. That wasn’t true. We were grown, on our own. I agree it was hard. Yet in those moments of a cold November day, we watched a doe, disabled and enduring, walk across a yard and eat a hedge. I wish she could have seen it like that. Amy Holman is the author of the collection, Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window (Somondoco Press, 2010) and four chapbooks, including the prizewinning Wait for Me, I’m Gone (Dream Horse Press, 2005). Recent poems have been in or accepted by Blueline,
Nice bomb although I suspect the eventual explosion to be mild and quickly doused with mist. If the world was filled with fathers like you, my, what a better place it would be.
ReplyDeleteFrom a technical perspective I think, at least from my reading, that the 'unfortunately' in the last two stanzas do not do the work that you intended, unless you intended the ambiguity. You wanted to mean that it is unfortunate that is was necessary to teach that lesson, right, not that it was unfortunate that you did? The quick fix 'I have had to..' breaks the repetition though, unfortunately. ;-)
Again, beautiful writing. Bravo!
I think you're right. When I recast it's probably going to be a couple stanzas longer, as I've had some ideas since writing it. I wanted the ambiguity at first, now I'm not so sure. Thanks Gerry!
ReplyDeletenot sure i understand the bomb idea but i love this, especially the last line
ReplyDeleteWell, I sort of thought it was a weakish poem that I could improve later, ergo poetry-bomb. I'm glad you like it though!
ReplyDelete