By Flapper Press Poetry Café:
The Flapper Press Poetry Café continues to support poets from around the globe and take great pride in featuring their new work. We've decided to expand our concept of "My Favorite Lines of Poetry" to include original work from our poetic contributors.
Please consider sending us favorite lines to feature on our site!
This week, we highlight the work of poet Marianne Brems and her lovely poetry collection, Stepping Stones—a full-length collection of poems that considers the ways incidents interact to make moving from one place to another possible physically, mentally, or spiritually. Many of these poems focus on nuances of the natural world, while others consider curious but easily overlooked aspects daily life.
Marianne Brems is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Stepping Stones (2024), and three chapbooks: In Its Own Time (2023), Unsung Offerings (2021), and Sliver of Change (2020). Her poems have also appeared in literary journals, including The Bluebird Word, Front Porch Review, Remington Review, and Green Ink Poetry. She lives, cycles, and swims in Northern California. Visit mariannebrems.com for more information.
To learn more about Marianne Brems, read our in-depth interview to discover more about this fine poet's passions and influences.
From Marianne Brems:
My favorite lines from "Preparing Soup":
"Then she hangs the shirt over the back of one dining room chair
and carefully buttons each button down the front."
These lines put expression into the physical world of the grief the speaker feels over the loss of her husband in a way that readers can relate to.
To order your own copy of Stepping Stones, visit:
Preparing Soup
It’s the attachment of new shelves
on empty walls that helps absorb the acid of grief,
surfaces to hold familiar vases, books, and photographs,
along with new ones.
She removes these things from confinement
in boxes she will soon flatten,
places them in the space bound to shrink
as her collection regrows in her new condo.
There are cabinet shelves to cover, curtains to hang,
hooks to secure,
and still so many boxes, more than she remembers,
though she left so much behind.
The dog stares at her from next to his dish.
Without urgency, she squeezes and releases
the loose folds of skin behind his ears,
squeezes and releases, before filling his bowl.
He retrieves from the bedroom the plaid flannel shirt
she gave her husband of forty-one years
last Christmas before the accident.
The dog jumps into her lap, plaid between his teeth.
She takes her time spreading the shirt over them both,
smoothing each fold as they lock eyes for a moment.
Then she hangs the shirt over the back of one dining room chair
and carefully buttons each button down the front.
She can see it there beside the table
as darkness gathers outside the curtainless window
and she prepares soup.
First published in California Writers Club Literary Review 2022, November 21, 2022
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