by Jim Ross
This One Will Be No Different
My mother worries every poem I write
is about how bad a mother she was.
They are like the flowers I brought her yesterday
to replace the wilting ones from the week before.
Why? she asks as I walk through the door,
arms full of neon blue daisies and baby’s breath,
Do you think my old ones are looking bad?
Reader, how you read that line might depend
as much on your mother as on mine.
She thought that I thought that she’d done something wrong
letting the blooms die away like she was,
though it’s really no one’s fault, not at all,
just a thing flowers do eventually
when they’re sitting on a counter
in their little red vase
cut off from their roots
and the ground where they grew.
Jennifer Schomburg Kanke, originally from Ohio, currently lives in Florida. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Massachusetts Review, Shenandoah and Salamander. She is the winner of the Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Editor’s Choice Award for Fiction. Her zine about her experiences undergoing chemotherapy for ovarian cancer, Fine, Considering, is available from Rinky Dink Press (2019). She serves as a reader for The Dodge and as a Meter Mentor in Annie Finch’s Poetry Witch Community. Her website is jenniferschomburgkanke.com.
Facebook author page: @jenniferschomburgkanke Instagram: @jenschomburgkanke
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Yju1oDUeenkOQziS3Kbzg
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Jim Ross jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after a rewarding research career. With a graduate degree from Howard University, in eight years he’s published nonfiction, fiction, poetry, photography, hybrid, and plays in 200 journals on five continents. Photo publications include Burningword, Camas, DASH, Feral, Litro, Kestrel, Phoebe, Stonecoast, Sweet, and Typehouse. He is a 2024 Best of the Net nominee in Art.