I am working on my verse novel inspired by the poems I wrote about my father during National Poetry Month and while the book will be told from the POV of the two girls, I am trying to see the main characters through the eyes of other family members and doing some character building through poetry.
Here is a new original poem from the point of view of one of the mothers in the book.
Seeing you, I see me
(your crooked mouth, your green eyes)
and him
(your long fingers, your black hair)
and it scares me so much
(you have no idea)
to remember that time
I so want to forget.
Hearing you, I hear me
(when you sing)
and him
(when you lose your temper)
and it makes me
(God help me)
want to tape your mouth shut
so I won’t ever
hear his voice again.
I know you don’t understand
why I tell you I can’t remember
but the truth is
I already remember too much
(the lies, the cheating)
and I think
If I let myself remember it all
(no! no! no!)
all of it
it would finish what he tried to do
himself
and kill me.
Just because I gave birth to you
doesn’t mean I have to tell you everything
or anything about him
at all.
@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved
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Wow.
You are SO tapped into this character’s head/voice. I would say you’re totally rocking your character exploration!
Favorite bit:
and it makes me
(God help me)
want to tape your mouth shut
so I won’t ever
hear his voice again.
Powerful, powerful stuff. Makes me wonder if some of these mother poems might make it into the book or at least bits of them, through interactions with the girls…
Another powerful poem. What a cool idea to work on character building this way.
Lovely, Susan. I’m so glad you’re working on these.
Susan, thanks for sharing this poem. I’ll echo Laura’s question above.
Nice work…
Interesting project, Susan. Whenever I see a series of parentheticals, I love reading them as if they were a separate poem, which works here – a poem within a poem!
I loved the mood you convey by putting some of the lines in parenthesis, and the “truth” of this poem. I had the same question as Laurie, wondering if poems like this could find their way into the book, too.
I just did what Julie suggested (read the parentheticals as their own poem). Cool! And I just noticed that parentheticals (or parentheses) has the word PARENT inside. Hmmm….deep and meaningful???
This is such important work (for you and the world). Thanks for sharing.
So few words. So much expressed. Vivid!