Nagging Instructions
What role have I
in your life?
Am I
the silken cobweb
that devours your dreams?
Am I
the eternal roar
that needs to be adored?
Am I
the mirror that
makes you laugh
while rumbling
nagging instructions about
bath time, homework,
quotidian urgencies?
Am I
the righteous rage that
cannot be caged
while plucking
popcorn, bubble gum
from shadows on the floor?
Come midnight
as your muddled form melts in sleep
I hug you and think,
Aren’t we all stunned wayfarers
in this thorny mindscape
salvaging eggshells, stitching chasms,
thawing relationships frozen by ice?
Am I
no different?
I exhale and
release my chokehold
This poem was published in Volume 14 of The Stillwater Review on June 9, 2024. This is a print journal published by the The Betty June Silconas Poetry Center at Sussex County Community College in New Jersey.
I wrote it after a fight with my kids.
Here are details from the website:
The Stillwater Review was founded back in 2010 at Sussex County Community College by poet and now retired Professor Priscilla Orr and is made possible through the support of the Betty June Silconas Poetry Center. The journal maintains a dedication to the lyric poem—musicality at the heart of it, the delicate ideas at work in the layers. Since that time, our journal has published poets like Michael Waters, Judith Vollmer, Paul Genega, Adele Kenny, Robert Mitchell, J.C. Todd, Chuck Tripi, Mihaela Moscaliuc, Diane Lockward, Robert Carnevale, Jessica deKoninck, Edwin Romond, Lois Marie Harrod, and Roberto Carlos Garcia.
Our journal welcomes poetry, nonfiction, and cover art submissions from September 1 to December 1 each year for our annual print volume released in late spring.
Leave A Comment