MOTHER OF
an ascending thoracic
aortic aneurysm, right above
the root. First found seven years
ago. The size of a walnut. She could
not work. We painted her red walls white.
Easier to sell. Put her artwork in storage and moved
her to a farmhouse on a hill. Then the symptoms abated.
The aneurysm dormant as a winter bear. We thought we’d been
spared. In summer it’s the size of a ruby plum. The way fruit
can ripen. The doctors speak in a language unlike my
mother. Sharp and sterile. A gloved finger draws
a vertical line down the sternum to explain
an open-chest approach. Her heart,
her heart, the mother of my
whole red world.
ABOUT THE POET
Ruth Awad is a Lebanese-American poet, 2021 NEA Poetry Fellow, and the
author
of Set to Music a Wildfire, winner of the 2016 Michael Waters Poetry Prize
and the
2018 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. Alongside Rachel Mennies, she is the
co-editor of The Familiar Wild: On Dogs & Poetry. She is the recipient of a 2020
and
2016 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. Her work appears in
Poetry,
Poem-a-Day, The Believer, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, Pleiades,
The Missouri
Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.
ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW
We loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), and we want an
opportunity to better hear our contributors. We're featuring audio recordings of
poems from our pages, read by the poet. This an open invitation to all contributors
from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to
hear it.
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