Flowers, Mothers, and the Trouble With...
In today's Unfit to Print I am excited to present a poem, a watercolor, and a poetry journal with a couple things in common: flowers, mothers, and the trouble with publishing poetry.
I am excited to share a watercolor painting by my good friend and first-ever writing partner, Sheri Reed, alongside a poem I wrote in 1998. The poem was published, once, in a literary magazine (now defunct) called Convulvulus (which was named after, depending on the eye of the beholder, a wildflower or a weed). Since then, the poem has pretty much gone unseen and unknown. Poetry is a funny thing—for readers, it is very much an “acquired taste.” When people tell me that they don’t read poetry, I just think they haven’t found the poetry that speaks to them yet—which is what I mean when I say poetry is an “acquired taste:” it takes some time and testing to find the work that resonates with you. But when it comes to poetry, most of us don’t seek it out. We maybe read the poems that people send to our inboxes or post on Instagram, but we’re not scanning the poetry shelf in a bookstore trying to find our next volume to read. A small part of the reason behind that, I think, is because the primary poetry we learn in school is written in middle English, or Elizabethan English, or…and we get it in our minds that THAT’s what poetry is. Reading it doesn’t feel entirely enjoyable; it feels hard, and we feel distant from the ideas contained in it. Why would we seek it out?
Another small part of the reason why readers can’t find poetry that speaks to them is, I think, due to how difficult it is for today’s poets to find a home for their work. For poets, like me, who want to publish*, a full-length manuscript is what you’re after. In the late 90s, the process usually went: publish individual poems, put individual poems in a collection, publish completed manuscript. But a lot has changed since then—the biggest thing, perhaps, that poets now pay “entry fees” to “contests” that read through thousands of manuscripts to select one, sometimes a handful of books, to publish. Selecting that handful of “good” and “quality” poetry is entirely arbitrary, filled with bias, personal preferences, the specific editorial style of the press, and all that other fun stuff. Leaving poets with odds of publishing that are almost as good as winning the weekly Play Four. The odds are even worse if you’re a Black poet, poet of color, Queer or trans poet, etc.
The poem I am sharing below has been a poem in my full-length manuscript for decades—it is a manuscript I have attempted to publish an uncountable number of times in many iterations, without success. But which, paradoxically, contains many individual poems that have been published alone, in journals (Note: I did finally publish this poem in a chapbook of the same title in 2002). I guess all I want to say about it to poets is, don’t stop writing poetry simply because the powers that be haven’t published you. The work still matters: the act of writing changes both you and the world for the better. And to readers, I just want to say: read more poetry. It is very, very good for your brain.
I’ve mentioned “the trouble with” so now, onto Flowers and Mothers.
Window Box
We walk with a pail full of dirt dug
from the compost mound out back
to the boxes lined on the walkway in front
one for each of the four windows,
our fingernails blackened
at the half-moon tips, our skin
darkened in creases from kneeling
over potted Impatiens.
She wore surgical gloves
when she handled the plants
to spare them brown edges.
Her work was slow, deliberate;
she would not let me practice:
I could only watch listening
to her recite the planting instructions
as if I was to store them up, a cactus,
for the day I took her place.
I asked about the name, at nine,
my beginner’s ears not clear
enough to hear nuance, and wondered
how a plant could be impatient.
She evened the soil in the boxes,
watered the wilting plants in excess
arranging them on plates
to catch what fell through
because Impatiens, she said,
do not mind wet feet,
and not enough water
will kill them certain,
their tiny heads facing west
as they are. I watched her time
the imbibing, looking at the minute hand
of her wrist watch, the small circle
of reflected light from the face
shining in my eyes. By now,
the sun had already begun its descent
to the low orange sky, our Saturday closing down,
the only thing left, to hang
the four completed flower boxes.
I could only think that tomorrow
outside on the front steps, my mother
might cradle me between her legs
and brush my hair until sunset,
the summer sun warm,
the flowers blooming full force.
—MF
*Poetry is an experience of beauty between one person and the world around them. Some may write it, or speak it, or paint it, or sing it, or share it with others, and some may send in their money to take a chance on having someone else select it to be published in book form. But none of those things make it poetry. The experience alone is the thing. We are all, in that way, poets. Relish it.
I am one of those people who do not seek out poetry. I let it find me. Like this beautiful poem. Thanks for finding me.