Kintsugi by Beth Copeland (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

Kintsugi
by Beth Copeland

Mother’s Japanese friends
send cards she forgets

to open—prints of blond
birds flying

over turquoise waves, pine branches
burdened with snow. Her mailbox,

stuffed with letters
and junk. I slice

into an envelope and pluck a handwritten
note from Kinko-san: I have not heard

from you. I am worried. You are so
old. Mother snorts, She’s

almost as old as I am!
and we laugh

at what’s lost
in translation. She forgets bills,

to brush her teeth or swallow
her thyroid pills and Lipitor

but remembers Kinko-san
from long ago. Should I write to say you’re

okay? I’ll do it
later, but she won’t. She stares

at a maple for hours when I’m
not here, her hair a corona

of uncombed
dandelion seeds. Should I

laugh or cry? Like a broken
bowl mended with molten

gold, she’s more
beautiful than before. I hold

her in the heart
of my heart

where she’s whole.

Originally published in the author’s collection, Blue Honey, recipient of the 2017 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize, The Broadkill River Press, 2017. 

PHOTO: Teacup with gold streaks exhibiting Kintsugi repair (Vlad islavovich, photographer). Kintsugi celebrates breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I wrote “Kintsugi” when my mother was in an assisted living home because she had short-term memory loss. She would forget to check her mail, and one day we found a card from Kinko-san, a woman she knew when she and my father were serving as missionaries in Japan during the 1950s. She and Kinko-san had corresponded with each other for 50 years.

PHOTO: The author with her mother Louise, her older sister Joy, and Kinko-san and her family on the occasion of Kinko-san’s son’s first birthday.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Beth Copeland is the author of Selfie with Cherry (Glass Lyre Press, 2022); Blue Honey, 2017 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize winner; Transcendental Telemarketer (BlazeVOX, 2012); and Traveling through Glass, 1999 Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Award winner. Shibori Blue: Thirty-six Views of The Peak, a collection of her original photographs and poems, is forthcoming from Redhawk Press.

The Nespelem Girl by Inés Hernández-Ávila (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

The Nespelem Girl
by Inés Hernández-Ávila

When my mom traveled to Galveston, Texas in 1946, the Tribal Tribune
(of the Colville Reservation) had a tiny story titled
“Nespelem Girl Marries.”
My mom kept the little article and gave it to me. It is my treasure.

íinim Niimiipu píke, my Nez Perce mom, was her own person. Always.

Daring risktaker for her time. WWII. She thought, “Hmm, I wonder what work I could find in Seattle?” Making her way there by herself, picking up odd jobs until she found the one meant for her.

Janice the riveter—Boeing Aircraft Factory. Imagine. The Nespelem Girl meeting other strong, risk-taking women from all over the country. Forging independence, Niimiipuu style, earning a salary, sending most of it home, but keeping a little for herself (she loved Joy perfume back then). Realizing what the world “out there” looked like.

During free time, off work, dressing up, styling, hair just right, bold lipstick, taking lots of photos solo or with friends in those cramped little photo booths. Back home in Nespelem I found a cigar box full of those photos of hers. In each one, I am drawn to her eyes. In each photo she looks directly at the camera, as she did in life. She looked straight at you, and that meeting of the eyes had to be real. She could tell if it wasn’t.

Soldiers Clubs on weekends. Patriotic to support the troops. Socializing with them, dancing, laughing, going out with your best girl buds, and your sisters when they came to town to stay with you in your sparse but nicely kept attic apartment.

Meeting my handsome Tejano dad, a Marine. Semper fidelis. Traveling by train to Galveston, Texas, to marry him. The Nespelem Girl finding herself in the heart of Texas-Mexican culture. My dad’s dad her ally, seeing his own mother in my mom’s Nativeness.

Becoming Catholic to marry my dad, but after I turned seven and made my First Communion, she took me aside and said, “ok, now you can go with your father to Mass every Sunday, or you can stay at home with me.”

Choice. My mom gave me choice. She didn’t argue with my dad about religion. She respected his faith. And she respected my right to decide.

Catholic notions of confession, sin, guilt, and dominion over the earth did not sit well with her. She never accepted Christianity, even though all her siblings did. She would say, adamantly, “I believe in God, that’s all.”

Despite only going as far as seventh grade, she loved to read and write. It was part of her curiousness. She wanted to know things, to be informed. She made me a passionate reader and writer. She loved language.

But oh!

Not one to budge if she had her own opinion, or if she was upset. I’ve been known to say, “If my mom is upset with you, you could drop dead in front of her, and it would make no difference. She would merely turn her head away to ignore you still.” You cease to exist until you make things right, if you have done something to offend, or until you understand that you will never be able to force her into anything, including changing her mind.

“Don’t say, ‘I love you,’ if you don’t mean it,” she would say. Mean your words, don’t treat language carelessly, don’t let your voice be false. Words have spirit, power, heart. Sometimes she would say firmly in family, “I have spoken.”

In the Niimiipuu language the word tamálwit means our laws, our governance, the way we are supposed to be true humans. This is when she would remind us.

When something terrible would happen, some offense to someone, some betrayal, some wrongdoing, so big as to leave her speechless, she would say, “Words fail me!”

The tenderness: One of my dear friends told me after he first met her, “Your mom has such a girlish laughter!” She did. Even in her nineties, she was known for her laughter, her delight, her inclination, like so many Native folks, to want to laugh, to need to laugh, to be light-hearted. Those who loved her wanted to make her laugh. We were healed by her laughter.

My mom felt for every living thing. She would be filled with sadness to see suffering. Fierce love. Fierce woman. Fierce mom. The Nespelem Girl always stood up for herself. My father was so fortunate to meet his match in her. I am so grateful they are my parents.

Qe’ciyéwyew, íinim píke.

PHOTO: Vintage bottle of Joy de Jean Patou perfume.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My mom was a force to be reckoned with. She and my dad knew full well what they had in each other. I am an only child, so I had ample time to observe, to notice, to listen, to grow in awareness about each of them. My mom, and therefore I, are from Chief Joseph’s band of the Nez Perce. We are enrolled on the Colville Reservation in Washington State. My dad was Texas-Mexican. He taught my mom to love Tejano conjunto music (though she never learned Spanish). They would go dancing every weekend with his brothers, cousins, and their wives. He trusted her so much that he turned over his check to her whenever he got paid, keeping 10% for his expenses. So much to their story that I’m writing a collection to honor them. In my life, an odd thing has occurred. Some people have wanted me to choose one side or the other, to identify as either Nez Perce or Tejana—as if I could erase either one of my parents. But theirs is a riveting story that I am telling. She once gave me her handwritten copy of a Kahlil Gibran poem that says, “But let there be spaces in your togetherness / Love one another, but make not a bond of love— / Sing and dance together and be joyous / but let each one of you be alone— / And stand together yet not too near together / For the pillars of the temple stand apart, / and the oak tree and the cypress / grow not in each other’s shadow.” I know this. I know that I come from strong, loving roots. This is what moves me to write about her and them.

PHOTO: The author and her mother at the seashore in Galveston, Texas.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Inés Hernández-Ávila (Niimiipuu/Nez Perce and Tejana), Professor Emerita, Native American Studies, UC Davis, is enrolled with the Colville Confederated Tribes. A Ford Fellow, she is one of the six founders of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). She is a scholar-activist, poet, essayist, visual artist, translator, and a member of Luk’upsíimey/The North Star Collective, a group of Niimiipuu creative writers/language workers. Luk’upsíimey members are fusing language revitalization work and promotion with creative writing, performance, and publication. She is collaborating with the Library of Congress´s Hispanic Division, to include more Indigenous writers from Latin America in their Palabra archive. Her scholarly essays, creative nonfiction, and poetry have been published widely. Her most recent publication (essay and poems) appears in The Shared Language of Poetry: Mexico and the United States (literal publishing, 2024). Her painting, Coyote, Looking Deeply, is the cover art for Native American Rhetoric, ed. Lawrence Gross. Recently retired, she is loving the time she has to create. She is completing For the Nespelem Girl and the Cisco Kid: A Love Story (honoring her mom and dad), and her memoir, LuzEspiritu/SpiritLight.

Lifetime Difficulties by Julene Tripp Weaver (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

Lifetime Difficulties
by Julene Tripp Weaver

My mother married an older man,
sixteen years her elder, she was nineteen.
She knew he would be her husband
the moment she saw him. She fulfilled
the role of a housewife, while she studied
stenography, Gregg and Pitman.

Early I learned my mother distrusted men.
She said they didn’t want women with big feet
who wore orthopedic shoes. She made chiffon
pies and celery boats. She bowled on a league
with my dad. They wed at a VFW hall. Pictures
show her standing on the grass, my father

on the sidewalk making him look taller.
She was fearful of thunder and lightning.
She never read to me, but said my classes
were too hard. She wrote her name everywhere
around the house, on mail, magazines, random
pieces of paper. She had nice handwriting.

On the side of their bed she explained how
she planned eight years between my sister and I—
showed me her diaphragm in its round case.
My mother repeated words. Diaphragm, eight
years. I wondered, why eight? Once she gave
away a rat terrier my father bought,

she didn’t like the label rat and it ran under
her feet. She lost her mother, then her husband
at age thirty-three, moved in with her brother.
I learned she could not live alone. She gave up
driving after Daddy died. She’d been a good
swimmer, on the Dolphin team

in high school, but she never swam again.
Never put on the lilac dress she looked beautiful
wearing. She pulled herself together for the funerals.
After, she put butter in her hair to protect herself
from the stylists and stopped bathing
till she smelled.

After Uncle died, my little sister got help,
we learned her diagnosis was schizophrenia,
She’d always had a busy mind filled with voices.
She stopped going to outpatient care,
became suicidal on Haldol, with its
serious side effects.

My sister moved her in with her after three attempts.
My mother threw away her knives, candles, anything
she thought dangerous. I remember when she tried
to throw my friend down our stairway in Queens.
How my mother said I was a difficult child,
but she was the tortured one.

PHOTO: Page of shorthand notes by Robyn Mackenzie.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My mother died in 2017, the same month my third poetry book was released revealing my status as a long-term survivor of AIDS; a fact I choose not to share with my mother. The year before, for my mother’s 85th birthday, I visited her with my sister at the nursing home where she lived her last years after a stroke. It was the final time I saw her alive. When she was actively dying I had my first panic attack and a depression that lasted several months, I lost 25 pounds. It was hard to know if what I was experiencing was due to my book release or the grief of my mother’s death. Because I never had the kind of relationship with her I longed for, and because we fought through my teens, I never felt close, so the emotional reaction was a surprise. No doubt it was a combination, but I realized the enormous grief I held about the loss of a mother I’ve felt my whole life.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: A photo from my childhood, after my sister was born. To the right is my mother’s mother, who was with us on a road trip. I’m standing between my grandmother and mother. Guessing it’s 1961 or 62.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Julene Tripp Weaver, a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle, Washington, worked in AIDS services for 21 years. Her third poetry collection, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, and won the Bisexual Book Award. Slow Now With Clear Skies, published by MoonPath Press, was released in April 2024. Widely published, her poems can be found in HEAL, Mad Swirl, Anti-Heroin Chic, Feels Blind, and in two recent anthologies, I Sing the Salmon Home and Rumors Secrets & Lies: Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion & Choice. Find more of her writing at julenetrippweaver.com. She’s on on Instagram  @julenet.weaver.

Author photo in Vashon Art Gallery (Seattle, Washington)
by June Sekiguchi.

Mother’s Memory Book by Tina Harrach Denetclaw (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

Mother’s Memory Book
by Tina Harrach Denetclaw

when my firstborn brother flashed
toothy wet toddler grins
his liquid dark eyes glistened with delight
and curiosity and knowing

he sat on the floor and pried open
five metal rings
mom’s only cookbook

1953, red and white gingham
Better Homes and Gardens
fluid line drawings scattering flair
amidst pages of text and measures

his small fingers’ new skill
for punched hole papers and sentry rings
moved gathered pages
one place to another

There, he said, and snapped
five rings of binder closed
mom left those pages      where he put them
That’s where he thought they should be

this tattered tome of grape jelly meatballs
and molded green salad
since passed into my home

browsing through

time-capsule of food culture
tender moment each time
I find
a page out of
                                           place

PHOTOS: Vintage Better Homes & Gardens Cook Book by Patrick Q. 

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Mom always seemed to know what would be important over time: when to take pictures; which young man would become her son-in-law; the unfamiliar baby blanket she left in my linen closet before she passed. That precious snuggle waited among my linens 14 years for my brother’s first grandchild to be born. God’s angels, no doubt, whispering in my mother’s ear.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: Mom on her wedding day with her sister, Shirley. I would wear that wedding dress 27 years later.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tina Harrach Denetclaw lives in California’s San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and five cats. A clinical pharmacist specialized in critical care and emergency medicine, she is new to the world of poetry writing. Silver Birch Press gave home to her first published poem in its SPICES AND SEASONINGS Series; Eclectica Magazine welcomed the second.

She Promised Us Each a Quilt by Gabby Gilliam (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

She Promised Us Each a Quilt
by Gabby Gilliam

The pain in my mother’s wrists
doesn’t discriminate––throbbing
within taut tissue as she pulls
another stretch of quilt across
the sewing machine’s arm.

Since my father’s funeral
she has attacked her fabric stash
a torrent of stitches to distract her
from his absence. She lets his loss
pool in the shadows at her feet
nudges it aside to press the pedal
as she feeds pinned squares
to the needle. When the sun dips
below the treeline, she leans
over to turn on the light.

PAINTING: Patchwork quilt, watercolor by Undrey.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My parents would have celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in November 2023, but we lost my dad in 2021. Since then, my mother has spent every day distracting herself from the emptiness in their house. She’s turned their living room into a sewing room––fabric and batting all over the place. She’s given herself a mission to make a quilt for each of us (daughters and grandchildren). She’s nearly half-way finished.

PHOTO: The author (right) with her mother at her wedding in 2010.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: My mother made this quilt for my son. It’s been in use ever since she made it for him. My mom chose the center panel because my son loves to read, and was making his own books for a short time. She then went through her stash of scrap fabrics to find coordinating colors and patterns to use for the rest of the quilt. She does her best to make all of the quilts with fabric she already has on hand, as she wants to work her way through her impressive inventory instead of buying anything new. If she gave herself over to quilting completely, she could likely finish one in a week or so, but she often works on them in between other projects, so it’s sometimes a couple of months before she finishes one. There are usually a few quilts in progress at a time, one being cut, one being pinned, and one being sewn. She will likely take a break from quilting soon as she finds it harder to sew in the warm weather and is most productive in the winter months, the cold and darkness much better sewing companions than the light.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gabby Gilliam is a writer, an aspiring teacher, and a mom. She lives in the Washington DC metro area with her husband and son. Her poetry has appeared in One Art, Anti-Heroin Chic, Plant-Human Quarterly, The Ekphrastic Review, Vermillion, Deep Overstock, Spank the Carp, and others. Her fiction has appeared in Grim & Gilded and multiple anthologies. You can find her online at gabbygilliam.com or on Facebook.

My Mother Called Me “The Faucet” by Joan Leotta (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

My Mother Called Me “The Faucet”
by Joan Leotta

Salty water spilled down my cheeks
and my nose reddened often by
tangled emotions, a heart quite
easily shattered by hard words,
imagined slights, sadnesses I saw
in others but could not cure.

My mother called me “the faucet”
Or simply pretended to ignore my outpouring
of watery emotion though her
words or ignoring me,
made me cry all the more.

Finally, after realizing
her “tough love” strategy was
not having the desired effect,
she explained her “naming, teasing”
was not meant to cause more pain.

“You see,” she explained, “you cannot
cry aloud so easily.
You simply cannot let ‘them’ know
they’ve cut the strings of your inner
music—no matter who
‘they’ is. They will see your tears
as weakness, not the wonderful
tenderness it truly is.
Hold back my little love.
Do not let your sorrow flow freely
out on the world’s stage, in front of strangers.
Save the tears for those you trust,
those who will value your sorrow
as an opening to your inner self.
Use the sorrow, the tears kept
Inside as a magic elixir to fight
Those who prey on you and others.
Turn your sorrow into action in front of them.”

I learned to control the “faucet.”
Tears became a hidden river,
powering a flood of action
for justice, for myself and others,
to action to defend myself with logic
to release the flow only in the presence
of those who love me.
Even now when I feel my old eyes
holding back a tidal wave of tears,
I remember and act on my mother’s admonition.

However, though I wonder now
what she was holding deep inside,
she who never cried in front of anyone,
that I saw, and how she had learned,
likely by experience, the hard lesson she
sought to teach me through words,
but I never asked her.
I wish I had asked her, and then said,
“Mama, you can cry in front of me.
I will always love you.”

PAINTING: Soul and Tears by Laurel Burch.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: This photo is of my mother and me early in 1990s. I chose it because I’m wearing the dress my daughter says she “sees” me in when she thinks of me and my dear mother loved that checked suit she is wearing. I think the photo may have been snapped on Mother’s Day in 1990 or 1991.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joan Leotta is a writer and story performer who has always loved her mother very deeply. Joan’s poems, essays, books, and articles have appeared in many journals, including Silver Birch Press, The Ekphrastic Review, One Art, McQueen’s Quinterly, and others. She has been nominated twice for Best of the Net and for the Pushcart Prize. While her website is in the process of being redone, you can find her latest escapades, including news about her peformances as Louisa May Alcott, on her Facebook page. On X, she is @joanleottawrite. Her latest collection of poems, Feathers on Stone is available from Main Street Rag.

The Circle of Life, Or How I Became My Mother’s Moth-er by Jackie Oldham (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

The Circle of Life, Or How I Became My Mother’s Moth-er
by Jackie Oldham

The Joy of Parents
is preparing their children
for Life.

The Pain of Children
is preparing their parents
for Death.

These words I wrote
three months ago,
after helping my mother navigate
an uncharacteristic
moment of fear

When, on a steamy August night,
I accidentally let three moths
into her house,
while she was talking to her sister
on the phone.

So unnerved was she
that she abruptly ended the call,
and enlisted me—
the child who used to run away
from butterflies—
to get rid of these moths!

Mom turned off the lights
In the kitchen and dining room,
while I turned down the living room light.

Then, she turned on the front porch light
to lure the moths to the screen door.

One moth took the bait,
landing on the screen.
I carefully opened the screen door
while closing the main door
behind me.

The moth flew away.

Back inside,
I stared
as Mom,
reaching for something
on the darkened dining room table,
suddenly flinched away from the second moth,
which had landed
in her outstretched hand.

The moth flew into the living room,
landing on the wall
near the dim lamp.

I rolled up a newspaper page,
smashed the moth,
then wiped the detritus
from the wall
with a handy paper towel.

The third moth was
a ghost, unseen
and never found.

I took my leave
from caregiving
for the night,
returning to my own home,

still worried about that third,
unseen moth.

Seven months later,
my Mother flew away.

IMAGE: Moth, watercolor by Ekaterina Kim.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem was originally written and published on my blog in 2017, as part of a longer poem titled “The Circle of Life,” a missive about the stages of life as positions on a clock. But I was never fully satisfied with that poem. I wanted the incident with my mother to stand on its own. When I read about the Silver Birch Press ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Poetry Series, I saw an opportunity to reframe and express the deeper meaning of the incident by introducing the metaphor of “mother” and “moth-er.”

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: Mother’s & Daughter’s Graduation Photos. Above: Dorothy Barber Oldham, Graduate of Frederick Douglass High School, Baltimore, Maryland (February 1950, age 17 years, 4 months); Right: Jackie Oldham, Graduate of Western High School, Baltimore, Maryland (May 1970, age 16 years, 7 months). Douglass High School (founded in 1883 as the Colored High and Training School), second oldest U.S. high school specifically for African-Americans, has produced many prominent African-American leaders. Western High School (founded in 1844) is the oldest public all-female high school in the U.S. Both schools are still in existence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jackie Oldham (she/her) is an essayist, poet, blogger, format editor, musician, and photographer from Baltimore, Maryland. Her poems have appeared in the journals WOC This Way for Poetry, Minyan Magazine, Spillwords Press, Rigorous Magazine, Oddball Magazine, and Global Poemic, and in A Lovely Place, A Fighting Place, A Charmer: The Baltimore Anthology (Gary M. Almeter and Raphael Alvarez, editors, Belt Publishing, 2022). Her personal blog can be found at baltimoreblackwoman.com, with companion Facebook and Instagram accounts. With Rafael Alvarez, she cofounded the blog braciolejournal.com (History of Poetry in Baltimore/1945 to the Present). As a format editor, she worked with Baltimore author Rosearl Julian West to format West’s memoir, Reflections: My Journey on Arunah, for publication on Amazon.com.

My Mother by Lakshman Bulusu (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

My Mother
by Lakshman Bulusu

One word
One world
Host
to a host of worlds

Your name, priceless
Your hands still cradle me
Your smile bears the light
of a thousand lamps
Your soft words—
My son, I am proud of you.
You scored the highest GPA—
echo love and resound in my heart
like dancing anklets
Your timeless prayer—
Let God be with you in mild and wild times
Your sacrifices, too deep for tears—
help with my homework,
preparing my favorite carrot halwa.
You, a poem personified.

PHOTO: Carrot halwa by Elizaveta Sokolovskaya.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My poem is about my mother and how compassionate she was, be it praising me on graduating with highest or making my favorite carrot halwa. It also highlights her prayer to God to protect me in “mild and wild times.” It describes my view of her—be it her soothing smile, her protective hands, or her love everlasting in its height. All these remind me, “What a priceless name a mother’s is.”

PHOTO: The author’s mother on her sixtieth birthday (Hyderabad, India).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lakshman Bulusu is a poet, educator, and author based in Princeton, New Jersey. He has been published in over 40 literary journals in the US, UK, Ireland, China, Taiwan, and India. He invented the “Star” poem genre and “Miracle Star” poem genre in 2016 and 2021 respectively. His poem “The Best Memorial” was chosen for the Origin Stories (April 2022) in The Gyroscope Review for National Poetry Month. His “Star” poem, “For Another New Day, Another New Light,” was chosen for theatrical performance of Healing Voices: Caregivers’ Stories on Stage, a joint 2023 production of New Jersey Theatre Alliance and McCarter Theatre, Princeton New Jersey.

Swimming Lesson by Arlene Geller (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

Swimming Lesson
by Arlene Geller

I jump into the pool, hoping to show off
my dog-paddling skills to my mom
lounging at the side of the pool

I surface, slick my hair back
and suddenly, I’m submerged again,
by a red and white polka-dotted derriere

I sink and struggle
the white tile base so close
I can touch it. Time stops.
I wonder if I’m drowning.
Would anyone miss me?

Where is Mom?
reading Good Housekeeping?
chatting with other vacationers?
she was not looking at me

          She was not going to save me

Finally, the girl lifts off and I rise
sputtering, I skim the surface
in slow motion,
I grip the pool’s edge
hoist myself up and out

I hurry
to Mom’s chaise lounge
I shake myself off and drip on her,
she squints up at me and,
with a hint of recognition, says,

          Well, it looked like you were having fun!

PHOTO: Swimming pool ring by Public Domain Photos.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I had a difficult relationship with my mother, so I decided to combine this with my family’s wonderful annual two-week vacation when we escaped the city to Lake George, New York. But even that turned out to be fraught with danger on this particular occasion. It has always been amazing to me that someone could be absent in your presence. I am currently working on poems of forgiveness.

PHOTO: The author as a baby with her mother (Jersey City, New Jersey, 1953).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Poet/lyricist Arlene Geller has been fascinated with words from a young age. Two poetry collections, The Earth Claims Her and Hear Her Voice, were published in 2023 by Plan B Press and Kelsay Books, respectively. Her poetry has also appeared in Tiny Seed Journal, Tiferet Journal, The Jewish Writing Project, White Enso, and other literary journals and anthologies. Collaborations with composers include commissioned lyrics, such as River Song, featured in the world premiere of I Rise: Women in Song at Lehigh University and since performed in numerous national and international locations. Visit her at arlenegeller.com.

Toss and Serve by Ruthie Marlenée (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

Toss and Serve
      Dedicated to Delfina
by Ruthie Marlenée

I play tennis in a gated community (now pickleball in La Quinta)
because you picked grapes and lettuce
throughout California’s fertile valleys
living in shantytowns, campos, and train cars

missing school buses to work in strawberry fields
tomato plants, packing houses and assembly lines
to set a cornucopia of food on the table
because you scrubbed golden toilets in Villa Park

ironed Mrs. Blumenthal’s soft silk and fine linen
shined her crystal, polished her silver
because you cleaned glass castles in Anaheim Hills
that I might shatter the ceiling in Yorba Linda (The Land of Gracious     Living)

and smash overhead—my head
crammed full of words—my words
lemon dropped across the page
like oranges or grapefruits or

chocolate-lettered-bonbons
plopped on a conveyer belt
words I now volley, toss and serve
like tennis balls, salads or tortillas

I sip Cristal out of a crystal goblet
gobble chocolate-covered strawberries
and caramel chews served on a silver tray
because I can pick and choose
a better life thanks to you

First appeared as the Santa Ana Poem of the Week in the Santa Ana Literary Association, May 2021. After a couple modifications, here it is once more.

PHOTO: Grapes by Bruno.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My mother Delfina Cordova was born in Santa Ana, California, in 1928, in an area known as El Modina. She, her siblings, and her parents were migrant workers from Mexico who also lived at times in La Habra, on train cars and in places called “el campo,” where she and her family were “pickers.” Because work got in the way, and because she was a caregiver for her mother, father, and younger sister, she didn’t finish high school, but later studied for her G.E.D. certificate at night school. Later, she would work as a nanny and a housekeeper. My mother taught me the importance of good grammar, about hard work and perseverance. She strove for my family to live in good neighborhoods and paved the way for me to succeed at whatever I could dream—but not too big.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: In this 1956 photo, my mother is visiting her ill mother in the Tuberculosis ward of the county hospital (her smile is so big because after the visit, she’s going out dancing and will meet my father!).

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: My mom and me, 1976, my senior year of high school.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ruthie Marlenée is a native Californian novelist, screenwriter, and poet whose work is rooted in her half-Mexican ancestral background. She resides in the desert of the Coachella Valley with her husband. Marlenée earned a Writers’ Certificate in Fiction from UCLA, and is the author of Isabela’s Island, Curse of the Ninth, nominated for a James Kirkwood Literary Prize and Agave Blues, which received an Honorable Mention by the International Latino Book Awards for the Isabel Allende Most Inspirational Fiction Book Award. Her writing has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. She is a member of Macondo Writers Workshop, Inlandia Institute, Palm Springs Writers Guild, and a WriteGirl Mentor. Her poetry and short stories can be found in various publications, including Shark Reef, The Coiled Serpent Anthology, So To Speak, Detour Ahead, What They Leave Behind: A Latinx Anthology, Silver Birch Press, Slow Lightning: Impractical Poetry, and Writing From Inlandia. She’s received awards for her screenplays from the Women’s International Film Festival, the Oaxaca Film Festival, Carmesi International Fest, Santa Barbara International Screenplay Awards, the Mexico International Film Festival, The Portland Comedy Fest, the Houston Comedy Film Festival, and the Military Script Showcase.