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A review by toniapeckover
The Republic of Motherhood by Liz Berry
5.0
I wish I'd had this chapbook of poems when I was a brand-new mother. Berry explores both the fierce, physical love of motherhood and the seesawing fear and doubt. These are wise, bloody, twisting, aching poems about what it means to love with your soul.
"I am alone a good deal just now
and I cry at nothing and cry most of the time,
in the cock-crow, through the chiming hours,
the velvet meadows of my dream life.
There are things in these curtains
that nobody know but me or ever will..."
"Sweet ghosts who've been awake
with their babies through the dark
kneeling to the filth and holy rags of the body
so tenderly it wounds them.
Who rise from grey light to walk the wet streets -
their tiny saints adrift in sleep's brackish waters - ..."
"I am alone a good deal just now
and I cry at nothing and cry most of the time,
in the cock-crow, through the chiming hours,
the velvet meadows of my dream life.
There are things in these curtains
that nobody know but me or ever will..."
"Sweet ghosts who've been awake
with their babies through the dark
kneeling to the filth and holy rags of the body
so tenderly it wounds them.
Who rise from grey light to walk the wet streets -
their tiny saints adrift in sleep's brackish waters - ..."