I wasn’t quite prepared for Then Flew My Caw Away: Poems, the recently published collection by Mary Meriam. Many of the poems are about broken families or broken or lost relationships. They’re filled with a sharpness, a toughness, words wielded like a heavy blade. But every so often, something else breaks through, and it’s so tangible you can almost taste it.
That something is pain. In “Heron,” the collection’s first poem, she writes, “I need to live another way,/ somewhere, maybe Oakland, / leave my old broken oak tree / feels like my only friend.” Several of the poems suggest a mother figure who, intentionally or not, dominated the child. The words often ache. They don’t ask for pity; they simply seek to understand and explain.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Some Thursday Readings
Reasons for not writing…and other poems – Kelly Belmonte at Kelly’s Scribbles.
Small things – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.
“In the Wilderness,” poem by Robert Graves – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.
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