Survivor’s Review<\/em><\/a>, which seeks “to publish stories, essays, and poems that are powerful, poignant, and unflinchingly honest.” Although I don’t write many poems\u00a0(eek! poetry!!), some stories just demand to be written in poem form. When that happens, who am I to argue?<\/p>\nI originally wrote “Mother’s Peace” last century (okay, that made me feel old, but it was still kinda fun to write), when I was living in an out-of-place\u00a0apartment building located at the intersection of two business highways in a large Southern city. I remember it was a weekday afternoon in the spring and I was supposed to be completing\u00a0multiple projects so I could head home for a few weeks to see my mother, whose cancer had returned. Instead I was sitting there, staring at my computer (and, truth be told, freaking out more than a little at how I was going to get everything done).<\/p>\n
In that moment, just before I became so overwhelmed that I knew paralysis would set in, the trucks along the highway suddenly stopped, the apartment complex went silent, the world went perfectly still, and I felt a powerful urge to scarf down some orange sherbet (my mom’s remedy for sick days when I was a kid). In those few seconds, the entire poem unfolded in my mind, and as the world came back to life, I scribbled the lines\u00a0down on a piece of junk mail.<\/p>\n
I somehow managed to get all my projects done on time and spent six weeks back home that summer, for which I am\u00a0grateful as my mother passed away\u00a0the following year. This poem has always stuck with me as a connection with my mother. She was the one who wrote poetry, not me. Unfortunately, she never got to read this\u00a0poem, but I like to think that she played a role in its being accepted for publication as I received\u00a0the acceptance letter just a few days before her birthday last month.<\/p>\n
And you know what my mother is saying now? “Stop making excuses and get back to writing.”<\/p>\n
Yes, Mom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s been foggy all day today, both outside and in my brain, and I have been bingeing on sci-fi and western movies (often combining the two) instead of getting my work done. So, yes, a typical Monday. \u00a0My poor writing partner has been trying to whip me into action, but it’s kinda hard with three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[24,26,25,27,28],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-cancer","tag-mother","tag-poetry","tag-publication","tag-survivors-review"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WVQN-22","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions\/128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}