“Here are the sheets pulled flat on the bed we all share, vertical stripes, thin and thick, orange, yellow, orange, yellow.”

This is a picture of my newborn with his father. My latest prose poem Baby Picture in the new issue of Platypus Press’ Wildness, is based on — you guessed it — a baby picture. I wrote this last year before I was pregnant. It is about the distance between my father and me, which is a spot on my heart too sore for me to say more about here. It is surreal to have this piece published so soon after giving birth to my first child — a child who has my face; a face I inherited from my father. My child’s relationship with his father will be very different from the one I have with mine. The long tides between families, circles broken and unbroken through time, are always on my mind but hard to write about. This piece is the closest I’ve come yet. I hope you like it.

Continue reading “New publication: family & fracture; second orange prose poem” →