To My Misbegotten Daughters
I sigh and rub my eyes
As I review your scattered pages
Wishing to cut ties
With my more capricious ages.
And, yet, here you are,
My misbegotten daughters,
As if waiting at the bar
Oblivious to these bothers.
So, I scan your lines,
Observing your earnest tone
Reflections of times
Perhaps best left alone.
And, yet as I reflect,
There’s really no escaping
The plain and simple fact:
You are all of my making.
Here, approaching first
Is the alexandrine child
On loving declarations nursed
Image upon image piled.
While on her meter
She all but trips
Her prettiest feature
Are her well-meaning lips
A few stools down
Sit the older girls
Sharing a frown
At such obvious pearls
Not for them
Are such restraints
As a syllabic hem
Or romantic feints
But, what they may lack
In overt charms
They give back
In all-embracing arms
Striving to capture in their
Free flowing verses
More emotional fare
Than contrived discourses
Regardless of forms
It’s unfair to label
Your innocent norms
As a sordid fable
For in each is contained
A prior burning passion
Not so ill-conceived
As neglected in non-maternal fashion
The one who’s misbegotten here
Is your mother dear, that is clear.
***
First Impressions
“Hi, my name is ______.”
That little tag meant to guide
strangers towards first contact,
insinuates itself between us.
I cry out mayday in my mind
desperate to avoid the
inevitable reduction of your self
to just a name and a pained smile.
***
Pass It Back
Swept under by a wave of nostalgia,
I consider the things I wish I’d known before.
I stare into the face of my younger self
Desperate to be desired, to be noticed
Hair bright with boxed dye,
Eyes dark with dime store liner,
Skin, a thinly veiled lunar map of anxiety.
I imagine taking her hand gently,
Holding her nervous gaze with my own
And saying:
Loving someone is not the same as being in love
Just as being alone is not the same as being lonely.
*****
Elise Bruce received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from SUNY New Paltz, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2015. Since then she has been living and working in New Paltz with her fiancé and their feline roomie.
