Category: Poems on Writing

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Mother of Letters

For hours my mother hovered over us,
her hand gently guiding mine, her wrist
a helm for my unsteady ship.
I knew how to hold a pencil,
how to grip it between my thumb
and pointer finger, how to lean softly
to avoid a callus. I knew how to form
all my letters perfectly before starting school.
For every birthday, a new notebook
would appear wrapped tightly with a bow.
I would bury my nose inside it
as if the pages would write themselves
with my breath. The pages I’d fill with words
my young tongue was too knotted to express.

—Tiana Nobile
 

From Cleave (Hub City Press, 2021). Reprinted with permission of the poet.

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The cure for writer’s block

is laundry.
Cram both arms with dirty clothes and
stuff them in the washer.
Brim the detergent, vinegar, bleach, if you dare.
Sit back down.
Write a bit more.
In thirty minutes or an hour, the dinger will ding.
Heap the wet mess into the dryer,
but wait.
The dryer is already packed because you forgot
to fold the last load. Divest the dryer.
Fold the clean clothes, arrange them into piles:
one for him, with you beside him (where you always are),
one for the son, one for the daughter —
the closest they will ever be is these towering piles
of bras, boxers, T-shirts, jeans, uniforms.
Now the dryer is void. Fill it.
Sit down again.
Write.
When the dinger dings, ignore it.
Write on.
Forget to clear the dryer.

—Megan Willome, first appeared in Every Day Poems. Also in The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press

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Whispered

I should tell you
about my hands, small
and experienced.

The other night,
when my youngest daughter
said, as I tucked her into bed,

Tell me something. Tell me anything,
I turned off the light and whispered this:

when I cut the beets tonight,
the red water went all into
the lines on my hands—

so many lines.

—L.L. Barkat, from Love, Etc., T. S. Poetry Press

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Dear—

1

What if

2

What if the only way
she could write again
required a white cup

3

And the cup,
would she pour herself
into it? Or, rather, bring it to her lips.

4

What if

5

What if she held the cup very close,
by its delicate white handle,
and whispered into the hollow.

6

Something like—
I was five, and he said
pick mulberries with me;
I could show you the tree
on which they weep and sway.
And her mother held her chin
and said, tell him no…
it would spoil your hand-sewn dress.

—L.L. Barkat, from The Novelist, T. S. Poetry Press