Still Life With Mother and Knife by Chelsea Rathburn

This is a book of home and forest. The poems often take place in a rural setting, but as an outsider, not judging but able to see the surrounding world from a clear perspective. It’s also a book about being a parent, about how children are hard and wonderful. These poems see the wonder in small moments, which is what poetry, parenthood, rural life, and this quarantine are all about. This is a powerfully lovely read to get you through the days. Buy here.

From “Medee Furieuse, 1838”

. . . How many times / have I send that look, the flash of fear / on my young daughter’s face when I have raged / at her or she small thing? It passes, the fury / and the terror—my daughter puts on socks; / the driver yields—but I’m left shaken, a stranger. / Maybe all mothers murder their children’s / innocence. In the painting, Medea holds / her boys so close they’re one body again, / two cords she must cut. The children have no choice / but to love the hand that holds the knife.

From “Elegy for City Life”

. . . How did our story / place us here, in a rented house perched high // above the pasture, the lowing of the cows rising, / troubling our dreams? Last week we heard // the bellowing all night. The next morning / a black cow stood above a feeble calf // in a posture that looked like grief . . .