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      April 7, 2014My Daughter Calls Me HagBarbra Nightingale

      then the B-word, followed
      by the C-word just before—
      or is it after
      I boiled her in oil, stewed
      her up in a bowl served to her father?
      That’s one version.
      Another says it’s smoke and mirrors,
      a classic pull-the-wool-
      and-be-done-with-it story
      straight from no one’s mouth
      tasting of nothing like truth.
      But so it goes: her version,
      my version,
      the version before the sky fell,
      the one before that, and at least
      two or three that happened after.
      I sit at my loom, counting stitches.
      When I run out of numbers
      perhaps I’ll understand
      how we came to this:
      bone in our teeth,
      gums dripping blood.

      from #41 - Fall 2013

      Barbra Nightingale

      “I started writing poetry at age twelve because I couldn’t sleep and wanted to ‘empty my head.’ Of course my first poem was about boys: ‘Boys are cute/ But are always mute./ When finally voicing their feelings/ They get the apple, and we get the peelings.’ I didn’t know anything about meter (obviously), but I did know how to rhyme! Not only am I a single mother (having divorced when I was only 21 with a one-year-old), I am currently a single grandmother, raising (almost finished!) my now eighteen-year-old grandson.”

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