These are the Rooms to my Mother’s House is a collection of previously-published poems that track the author’s journey from a childhood with a drug-addicted mother to becoming a mother herself, plagued by demons and self-destructive behavior.
Some Rooms have humorous anecdotes on head lice and “Acne in the Strangest Places.” Poems like “Storage” are bedtime stories:
“When we were the children the rooms were like gardens and the weeding we did was done to belongings.”
These are the Rooms to my Mother’s House reveals the author’s bittersweet swim towards self-worth, all the while resonating in the style of shock poets, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.
“The medics have plucked my insides of disease. Two, three-times cancer hang, the stars of my show. My tumors in Coke bottles. My ovaries in a Vasoline jar.”
Nursery rhyme themes play throughout Rooms, carrying a sickening sing-song urgency in poems “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and “Cinderella’s Bunions.” Some poems ring of Galway Kinnell’s, Book of Nightmares.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of Abbey #87, Adobe Abalone, Allegheny Review, Alternative Press Magazine, Amherst Review, Angelfish Press, Arnazella, Artisan’s Almanac, Baby Makes Two, Bay Area Poets Coalition, Black Spring Press, Blind Man’s Rainbow, Blood and Fire Review, Brown Bottle, Caveat Lector, Cedar Hill Review, Cold Mountain Review, Confection, Cover Magazine, Creative Juices, Curriculum Vitae, Eidos, Feh!, First and Hope, Florida Review, Intrepid, Luna Negra, Nada Press, Big Scream, National Poetry Forum, Onionhead, Opus, Oregon East, Outside Lining Death Batch, Poetalk, Poetry Forum Journal, Poetry Motel, Prairie Dog, Purple Monkey, Running Deer Press, Slightly West, Sierra Nevada College Anthology, South Ash Press, Suburban Wilderness Press, Ten and Six, Twisted Nipples, Verve, Volume Number 22, Yesterday’s Magazette and Maple Leaf Rag where these poems were previously published.
These are the Rooms to my Mother’s House has over fifty 11×17 images in an accompanying exhibit. Select poems are featured in multimedia musical, Ice Scream Theater.
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