• 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»Motherhood and Guilt»Cheryl Clark Vermeulen – Poetry

Cheryl Clark Vermeulen – Poetry

0
By Mom Egg Review on June 13, 2019 Motherhood and Guilt, Poetry

Cheryl Clark Vermeulen

 

The Suckling Leading Lady

Let’s say Homer is a woman (Shakespeare for that matter)
and an eye is burned through on a figurehead swollen with water.

Splitting across an arm or a leg, desire has fallen
or is false or passionately kissing the woman goodbye.

Adrift, at night, the streetlamps pearl. I’m here and I’m nothing
but miles and gusts of music and skin

putting on something a bit more commodious.
My face is a plaything pale and fatty. I do not rattle.

Last night, every night, I feed the babies white neurology.
My sights have widened (my heart has eyes).

Never have I provided so much comfort to anyone before.

Unraveling are the lamb’s sewn eyes. By day, the grammar
school kids will pour out and rain will clobber the umbrellas.

Language, I am ready. I am ignoring the babies.

 

Bronchial Clutter

I used to think I had no shame.

Do you want to be my friend?

I rush along sputtering

a trail of a trail of a trail

of of of—that backward cooing.

On top of it, today, an excavator

truck and my checking

for fevers through the rectum.

Pathos is a real feeler.

In each update I send out

the ambassadors of my life.

They have my face somewhat.

My argument is that they are happy.

Last night they kept crying, too cold

from a window left open. Damn

I bought a cappuccino then lost it.

If you could only see what I am working on,

a trail of a trail of a trail of a

way to batten down self-loathing.

It is a rocket ship.

I change their sodden pajamas.

The designs are rhizomatic.

In my parental thesis, all the bunnies

are plagiarized. I time the joke just right

so my babies are laughing.


Cheryl Clark Vermeulen’s chapbooks include This Paper Lantern and Dead-Eye Spring. She is an Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts at MassArt and Poetry Editor at Pangyrus. She lives in Jamaica Plain with her family.

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Previous ArticleMegan Leonard – Poetry
Next Article E. Kristin Anderson – Poetry

Comments are closed.

February 1, 2023

Poem of the Month – February 2023

January 14, 2023

Judgment

January 14, 2023

Blair Hurley – Breastfeeding and the Early Sacrifices of Motherhood

January 14, 2023

M.A.M.A. issue 54 – Mathilde Jansen and Lisa DeSiro

January 14, 2023

Maram Al-Masri – Poetry

January 14, 2023

Noreen Graf – After Your Mother Dies and What If I Don’t

January 14, 2023

Cristi Ackerman Wells- My Mother

January 14, 2023

Starr Davis – Strange Fruits

January 14, 2023

Elīna Eihmane – Night Mommy

January 14, 2023

Heather Lanier – Origin Story with Porcelain Duck

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

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