TROUBLESOME RISING DIGITAL ANTHOLOGY
Tether
Jan LaPerle
When I wash dishes in our old sink
I can feel the weight of my daughter
in her room above me.
It’s the most comfortable sound—
like wheat in wind. Or stars.
Some days I want to shut
her bedroom door
to keep her there…Shhhhh…
I am downstairs tightening
all the sharp edges of this,
this life I set down onto water,
a sponge I watch float from me.
I pretend again I am all goddess,
grab the sponge and keep scrubbing.
My toes curl in their slippers.
I know we are the wingless ones—
the mothers. Let me depend
on the bright morning
to carry me.
But that morning.
I received a call,
there was an accident.
My friend’s daughter, she is gone.
Eleven years old. The sink floods
and I think it is fear
spreading across the floor.
At the funeral I stood along the far wall
as my friend moved,
person to person, and I
waited while she waded toward me,
held me like a raft. I tried,
but I was sinking.
This is a weight I know
I will die from.
Fear tethers us.
I am not safe.
I cannot keep my daughter
safe, here at the sink or anywhere,
no comfort from
the dishes, even the clean ones.
The net beneath us
draining water.
Needlepoint
Jan LaPerle
What is it like for me here?
All around me there is fire
but I am afraid not of fire
but the lack— the washed-out
sadness threaded across the grass-tops
of my wet, wet heart.
(The garden hose, the spigot
I forgot to close.)
I am on the little shore
of this flood I’ve made.
My boat only a thread.
My flowers gasp for air.
It’s all your fault! They holler
in color
so pretty
it makes me forget that it is.
I dread what they dread:
Wintering and all her cold friends.
So I go inside to hide.
I sit on the couch and fight back with my needlepoint.
I will live fully! I holler into my threads.
I stitch a flower with pretty string.
I stitch this life together.
I am threaded through
with shadows weaved inside shadows
of every woman I was born from.
Jan LaPerle’s book of poetry, Maybe the Land Sings Back, was published by Galileo Books. Her other books include a book of poetry, It Would Be Quiet (Prime Mincer Press); an e-chap of flash fiction, Hush (Sundress Publications); a story in verse, A Pretty Place to Mourn (BlazeVOX), and several other stories and poems. She completed her MFA from Southern Illinois University. She lives in Kentucky where she retired from active duty at Fort Knox as an Army master sergeant. She now teaches high school English. Her website: janlaperle.me
Edited by Melissa Helton
Length: 272 pages
Releases: September 2024
