Love Me, Anyway by Minadora Macheret (cover artist: Sharmon Davidson)
Love Me, Anyway examines the body in all of its imperfect glory, surviving chronic illness, and growing into womanhood haunted. Macheret explores the mother/daughter relationship, bridging years of absence with the filaments of the speaker’s own identity, weaving together mother/daughter body/body illness/illness, at once writing letters to herself and the ghost of her mother, still so present in the mirror. “Her ancestors: a current in which she bathes,” she leaves nothing behind, “Dear disease,” she writes: “Please gentle the body—thicken it with sleep.” This collection is tender and honest, bones laid bare, “god-struck” with longing, and stretched wide. (Porkbelly Press, 2018) » available in our shop » full details
EXCERPT
(SELF) EXTINCTION: AN ELEGY FOR ALL MY DEAD WOMEN
i.
the day you disappeared,
the sports bra made my ribcage
cinch my sharp spine inward
push prepubescent breasts outward
I didn’t know my hormones perched
bodies open waiting for your sign.
Maybe they need a mother
like trail guides, climb the ridge
of my sex—bud into being
and without her? Become unnecessary.
ii.
my father brought home a woman
she promised his children an instant of forever
an herb garden stamped the placement of her feet,
of lavender-lush, those thyme tracked trails.
She taught me necessity, green thumb on her brow,
be my Demeter—
stretch-wide my mother’s ghost.
iii.
every seven days cells replace themselves
every three years I replace my mother.
iv.
in smoky bars you hung
to the curve of bar stools,
mistaken I pressed my lips
to the outline of your shot glass,
I blurred into other.
Breathe me out sweet, Daisy—
before I forget you.
v.
you were an indent of laughter
paintings bloomed from your mouth.
Now, your body sea-strewn,
your words suture me closed.
about the poet
Minadora Macheret is a Ph.D. student and Teaching Fellow at the University of North Texas. She is a Poetry Editor for Devilfish Review and the Co-Coordinator of Poets in Pajamas Reading Series. Her poetry has won the Sigma Tau Delta First Place Poetry Award, Seaton Fellowship, and other awards. Her work has appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Red Paint Hill, Rogue Agent, Connotation Press, and elsewhere.
Porkbelly Press 