History Mother Daughter Poems

Oh my darling 
My Sweet 
Russian Queen
Mother of my home
Born of my dreams
Mother of my heart 
Hope sewn through our seams 
In our troubled history
Lost...

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Amongst the many other things I'm sorry
So sorry my heart breaks in two
As angry as I've ever been
My soul's wish would be to save you

My...

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"Lizzie Borden took an ax
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one."

Whoever wrote this jump-rope song
About Lizzie...

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[paraphrase of a Svan folk song]

Tamar's mother said, "Tamar,
You were born fully grown.
Child, I saw you in a dream
I looked into the starlit sky and...

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That wintry day I fell, my left thigh did 
               ...

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Looking back, one thing comes clean-glass clear
you were always there for me subduing every fear.

I tried to do my duty, be a husband strong and...

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"Open Oceans"



Kneeling on pearls
wisdom preys

praying
preying

hungry hearts
count the days 

wasting away
in all that preying 

for prayers 
to be answered

children become
strangers

reading 
strange words

finding 
themselves puzzled

genuflecting to a...

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Dark -thirty

I don't know what time it is. 
I know work ended, 
at least the place I get paid, 
to do the things they need...

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‘I wish for his head, on a silver platter’
Mother whispered to daughter
‘Go dance my love, grant me the golden trophy’

‘I love you, mother,’ confidently
She took...

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The Seconds 

[Excerpts]

 
(c) 2019, Anita Lerek
 
 
 
Section 1/4

First Generation - Before the Holocaust 

 
Lvov, Poland 1930s.  Mother, you were a...

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My mother died young, she was only sixty-nine,
we had a history that was not always wonderful;
she said and did things, and I said and did...

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Sewing machine, long idle, gathered dust
Old, as mama told, worn, left here to rust
I slowly examined the antique piece
Candle flame flickered, anxiety increased

Nothing odd on...

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Wilderness edible forests,
to hungry mothers,
became wild undomesticated wastelands
to commodifying and taxing FatherLand patriarchs.

Wilderness matriarchs once Pledged Allegiance to the Sun,
and Gratitude to GrandMother Moon
for both...

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Celine Dion singing quietly in the background
It's all coming back to me now
There were moments of gold and there were flashes of light...
You made growing...

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My mama loved her yellow pills;
		she'd taken them for thirty years.
		Her outlook wouldn't be the same
		without them. They assuaged her fears

		and made her smile, although...

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