Natasha Kochicheril Moni is a 2018 Jack Straw Writer and the author of four poetry collections (The Cardiologist’s Daughter, Two Sylvias Press, 2014; Lay Down Your Fleece, Shirt Pocket Press, 2017; Nearly, Dancing Girl Press, 2018; A Nation (Imagined), winner of the 2018 Floating Bridge Press chapbook competition, forthcoming). http://www.natashamoni.com/
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When Asked What You Know About Grief, You Remind Me
of me—that I don’t believe in umbrellas
or eggs or beets or anything
that could pass for an egg,
an umbrella, a beet.
You tell me there is a meadow beyond
the fence over there and how it disappeared
your dog—but that fence is falling,
has been in a perpetual state
of suspension since you and I have—
and you are allergic to fur.
You are in the middle of an omelet
without ketchup, only because there isn’t,
and you tell me grief is…
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poverty has its own alphabet. we speak only to expand our understanding of what came second, be it silence or the ventriloquy of god. no one here has lost a baby but there are enough of us to go around. I’ve nowhere to tell you about place.
Heather Minette’s HALF LIGHT released by {isacoustic*}
release announcement:
https://isacoustic.com/2018/06/15/heather-minettes-half-light-release-announcement/
review by George Salis:
https://isacoustic.com/2018/06/20/a-review-of-heather-minettes-half-light-by-george-salis/
review by Sara Moore Wagner:
https://isacoustic.com/2018/06/18/sara-moore-wagners-review-of-heather-minettes-half-light/
review by Crystal Stone:
https://isacoustic.com/2018/07/09/a-review-by-crystal-stone-of-heather-minettes-half-light/
*
Half Light on goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40533588-half-light?from_search=true
*
for purchase:
from Barnes and Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/half-light-heather-minette/1128985743?ean=9781387874200
from Amazon
if told by your hands to set myself on fire, I would pray my father into a snake and death would cry in a whale for every bee that lost its voice.
an aversion to sleeping on my stomach. needing to be alone after eating in front of people. my father asking in the library for books on Nagasaki. field trips to indian mounds where bullies would worship my retainer and put mud in my mouth. my permissive mother and her essays on the grief of a social god. not understanding how in some films there were women speaking on what was heard in the distance and how in others just men sitting around to surprise satan. my brother threatening to run away and me showing him how my ghost would look breaking his toys. sticks from a dogless future.
the voice of god is the light by which a cricket kills its ghost. grief the chosen dress of our no-show photographer.
–
mother prays for odd things. like passwords. and that there be one day a mirror she can warn.
–
my father was born with six fingers on his right hand and seven on his left. he was not fond of either hand until later in life when the grandchildren asked him at different times during their visits if he had been tortured.
–
my brother says it’s part of his condition that he can only explain himself from the waist down. before I can play doctor, he remembers he has a story he wants me to write. in the opening scene a young man is blowing dust from a human skull made of plastic because it’s all the narrator can afford.
–
your sister is the only person on record to have been born without a gift. I was told this in confidence by an angel masquerading as a small animal the size of which escapes me.
–
excuse my friend his earlier joy in saying who do I have to fuck to get fucked around here. at age 19 a man exploded beside my friend and my friend went quiet and later to his grave thinking his own bomb malfunctioned.
–
I know it’s early but I need you to make sure there are no bugs on your father before he goes to work.
–
god twisted her ankle on a toy phone while thinking of the child you love least. mother was passing for an underwater attraction based on the inherited imagery of oblivious angels. photo credit had been done to death.
kingsoftrain 