• Home
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Links
  • MER Journal
    • Latest Issue
    • Back Issues
    • Subscribe to MER!
  • MER Online
    • MER Quarterly
    • MER Literary Folios
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Creative Prose
    • Essay
    • Interviews
    • Book Reviews
    • Craft
      • Authors’ Notes
    • Art Gallery
      • Special – Hybrids
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
      • MER 18 Virtual Reading – Voices From HOME
    • Currents
      • Announcements
      • Highlights
  • Shop
    • All Issues
    • One Year Subscription
    • Two Year Subscription
  • Submit
Facebook Twitter Instagram
Facebook Twitter Instagram
MER – Mom Egg Review
  • Home
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Links
  • MER Journal
    • Latest Issue
    • Back Issues
    • Subscribe to MER!
  • MER Online
    • MER Quarterly
    • MER Literary Folios
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Creative Prose
    • Essay
    • Interviews
    • Book Reviews
    • Craft
      • Authors’ Notes
    • Art Gallery
      • Special – Hybrids
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
      • MER 18 Virtual Reading – Voices From HOME
    • Currents
      • Announcements
      • Highlights
  • Shop
    • All Issues
    • One Year Subscription
    • Two Year Subscription
  • Submit
MER – Mom Egg Review
You are at:Home»Curated»Mothers Respond»Aleppo in the Heart of the Living Room and Archipelago by Amy Strauss Friedman

Aleppo in the Heart of the Living Room and Archipelago by Amy Strauss Friedman

0
By Mom Egg Review on March 14, 2017 Mothers Respond, Poetry

Aleppo in the Heart of the Living Room

Every soul needs a proper chaperone
to say nothing of a champion.
Especially after sloshing
around this broken world.

My heart lacks a tenant,
though each chamber
stands wallpapered
and ready for occupancy.
I’ve posted want ads
in all the neighborhood papers:
Open Room, Low Rent,
Minimal Maintenance Required.

I wait.
Squint in the glint
of pregnant light
that streams like a laser
through my blinds,
reflecting off my daughter’s name
in dainty gold plaque
hanging around my neck.

I think of Aleppo’s children,
who live and die where light is blue
and bombs force buildings
to vomit human flesh.
I flash to the still life
of the boy in the back of an ambulance,
snuggled in the blasted ash
of other people’s bodies.

And yet it’s still life
here in my open-faced apartment
where the mountains stare
through the windows
bare-chested and unashamed,
and my life’s guarded
in whispering daylight
that fades to the thrum of a rhythm
I can no longer hear, only intuit,
like the heart of the child gasping
for slivers of moonlight
as it chokes on the smog of its brother.

 

 

Archipelago

The kitchen designer asked
if we wanted an island or a peninsula.

Amid sand and seas,
did we want desertion or rescue?

“We’d like an archipelago,” I told her.
Each our own small island to return to

when the salt water my daughter and I feed each other
trammels the tides of our throats.


Amy Strauss Friedman is the author of the chapbook Gathered Bones are Known to Wander (Red Bird, 2016). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Rumpus, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Kentucky Review, decomP, Red Paint Hill, et al. She lives in Denver, Colorado. Her work can be found at amystraussfriedman.com.

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Previous ArticleOrigami by Colleen Michaels
Next Article Sarah Irvin – Child Citizen Project

Comments are closed.

May 31, 2023

MER 21 Online Launch Reading

May 31, 2023

Poem of the Month – June

May 19, 2023

MER 21 Launch Reading – Sunday May 21 in NYC

May 10, 2023

Poem of the Month – May 2023 (2)

May 10, 2023

Poem of the Month – May 2023 (1)

May 10, 2023

Jennifer Georgescu – Art

May 6, 2023

MER Bookshelf – May 2023

May 4, 2023

Small Off Things: Meditations from an Anxious Mind by Suzanne Farrell Smith

May 1, 2023

Sita in Exile by Rashi Rohatgi

April 26, 2023

In Circling Flight by Jane Harrington

Copyright © 2022 MER and Mom Egg Review
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Submit
  • Contact

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.