Permanent and Wonderful Storage: poems by Alec Hershman. Number 19 in the Robin Becker Chapbook Series, selected by editors Crystal Boson and Ron Mohring.

Cover image: Rick Beerhorst, “Leaving the Body”

Publication:  February 1, 2019 [100 copies]
ISBN: 978-1-949333-46-6
33 pages
$ 9.00

 

 

 

 

 

Alec Hershman is the author of The Egg Goes Under (Seven Kitchens Press, 2017). He lives in Michigan where he teaches literature and writing to college students. His poetry appears widely in literary journals and magazines such as Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, The Journal, Sycamore Review, DIAGRAM, Columbia, The National Poetry Review, and Harpur Palate. You can find links to his work online at alechershmanpoetry.com.

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Bulrushes 

Like a ceremony for cruelty 
becomes itself a form of cruelty, 
I lowered the piper’s nest into water–

two bald eggs, and the glue of mud
unlocking in the sideways drift.
It was cold and clean, and the bowl sank fast;

my hand in the stream
was my mother’s hand–milk-white
with a blue vein.

Because the impulse to say this
spares us nothing, I was grateful
for the table of my thigh

on which I wrote to you
there would be no separation
at birth–there would be no need of kindness then.

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• Purchase your copy here. Thanks so much for supporting this poet and the Robin Becker Chapbook Series!