Barbara Conrad

Three days in a row, tornadoes
have torn up the Midwest, twisted
routine into rebar, trapped

the children. A blanket of grit
flattens roads and houses, wraps
them in conversations caught mid-breath

while the storm sabotages promise,
burns vows to cinder. Unbidden gaps
in what might have been our evermore.

-from "Unconformity"

Ideally, I would be rating individual poems, because there are some real five star moments in here. I mean, "twisted/routine into rebar"? That's fantastic. There are also some low points, some trite notes that make their way into the collection. (Writing poems about things you read about in the newspaper is always going to be a gamble for a poet, I think.) On the other hand, she absolutely faces her own life, including her age, her failed loves, and her upper class white family and its complicity in the racism and classism that cut someone dear to her (her family's maid) out of some of the moments of her life. That's more backbone than some of the poets I've encountered have displayed.

On the whole, I'm absolutely joyful that I encountered this woman and her poems, and I will be keeping an eye out for her in the future. If the poem that pointed me in her direction is any indication, she's only going to have more of those five star moments in the future.

*************************
1/29/19 update:

An Eagle's Wing, the Leg of a Deer

What my daughter found
on a bloodied trail in the Tetons,
cutting short her early morning hike.

Nature unencumbered. Naked. Raw.
Without resolve. Bear or mountain lion,

maybe a moose, she says.
She lives to tell about it.
Though it could have been otherwise.

Aren’t we always a half-breath between
forever and nevermore? Tight-rope
of serendipity?

Cat lost in a crawlspace for eight days.
You either find him or not.

Distraction at an intersection,
car careens through a red light,
Mercedes or jalopy, it doesn’t matter.

A young woman’s mania comes back. One spark
and the whole planet is burning.

The pizza burns. Your poem gets published
in the New Yorker. No one reads it.
Everyone reads it. You eat the pizza.

At night you hear a scratch on a screen
outside your window. Cicada or

perpetrator. You cut off the light,
pull the covers over your head.

Tomorrow morning
you either wake up or you don’t.

(Published on Palette Poetry)

AKA how to get me to instantly purchase your most recent poetry collection for further perusal. (I will try to get to this in sometime in the next month and report back.)… (mere)