Shambles

"Portrait of a Mother on the Eve of Spring Break" just came out in Shambles, A Literary Journal on February 24, 2021.

Portrait of a Mother on the Eve of Spring Break

By: Tamra Plotnick

through the parlor window I witness my last umbilical issue load her distilled yet spindly wonder into a hired car and stream away

trailing behind a long buried yet noodling crevasse an invisible emptiness threading my core that she began spinning since her womb exit fifteen summers back that holy filament hooked onto her suitcase wheels stretching my hollowness past prospect

I stand behind glass these wafery walls of skin vacant of her glamour, grace, gall this empty arc of bones pressing against my own architecture prayers, poems, partners so as not to cave under the weight of values ill-instilled quests unshared talk too tacit bonds unbound

like Demeter I forfeit color and verve with her departure though blossom’s promise looms a day away and the charge is to view flamboyantly all

till the return of my Persephone I will spring break