The Mothers’ Day Rugrats episode has something to do with Chuckie chasing butterflies but more to do with my father smearing at his face with wet palms and sniffing over a dead cartoon. More to do with my concrete teeth and dry eyes in blue quivering television light, staring somewhere beyond her music boxes, my father’s whimpering mucus lament a clump of hair to pinch from a shower drain.
Her funeral had less to do with tumors buried below tulips and more to do with my father grasping at the frays of a clergyman’s collar to stitch himself back together. More to do with my baby teeth squeezing blood from my cheek while my little brother wailed and I wound a rubber band ball around my core so thick and tight it wouldn’t snap apart till middle school.
Robin Reiss is a twentysomething from Massachusetts who graduated from Westfield State University with a degree in English literature. Her writing can be found in Westfield State’s Persona as well as Futures Trading and The Sigma Tau Delta Review. In her free time she may be found eating pizza, balancing things on her head, and generally fretting over the future.
Categories: Poetry
Tags: Composure, e-zine, ezine, hyperbole, longing, melancholy, melancholy hyperbole, new, poem, poet, poetry, poets, Robin Reiss, submit, writing
Melancholy Hyperbole 