On  the November 17, 2022 post, I featured an interview with Rebecca Brock, author of Each Bearing Out.  She graciously sent me two poems to share.  One was shared during that post and today, I'm sharing her other poem. 
Originally appeared online at Mom Egg Review, December 2020

Good Housekeeping
She keeps trying to get her house in order
pretending with the rest of them
that the sun won’t melt the earth,
that the seas won’t burn, that the land
won’t disappear under water or ice
or our own triggered destruction.
She keeps going back to the dishes,
to the meals, to washing the clothes,
to worrying over the state of the carpet
which is funny in a sad way
if you knew the state of her house--
the way the windows leak, the way the doors
have to be snugged closed, the way
they blow open anyway, with the slightest wind,
the cracks in the ceiling from settling or moisture
or just poor craftsmanship. She still decorates
for holidays, she still worries
over the tidiness of things, the nutrition of meals,
the state of the bathroom—of the toilet--
under assault by the misdirection
and lack of attention
of three males in one small house.
She is like some mad woman
straightening a frame during an earthquake,
righting a vase after a hurricane took off the roof.
She sees it is the season to behave so,
to live beside, within madness--
to mother through it.
It is despair pushed off
to vacuum anyway, to make a decent meal,
to require everyone to sit. She is hoping
the children won’t notice or remember the windows,
the carpets—the way the door won’t shut.
She is desperate for their happiness
for their solidity, for them to make it
to some new place
she never will.

This poem really caught my eye.
Plus happy news, Rebecca has recently found out she is a Pushcart Poetry Award nominee for two other poems

On November 12, The Poeming Pigeon held an online launch party for Issue 12.  The video for that event is now posted and can be found HERE or below.

There was to be an in person event on November 13 but it needed to be rescheduled and moved to Zoom.  While I was excited to present in person, I can now have my friends in other time zones attend via Zoom. You must register to attend.
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Hope to see you next month for our December 10th show for Part 2 of our launch of The Poeming Pigeon. You can register for event HERE

Jama at Jama's Alphabet Soup has Poetry Friday hosting duties today.  She's cooking up a delicious Thanksgiving parody poem. Plus she always has the most scrumptious food photos.

Today I have an interview with Rebecca Brock, author of an adult collection of poetry, Each Bearing Out.    

I "met" Rebecca in Laura Shovan's February Poetry Group on Facebook. She just published this wonderful collection about motherhood and the natural world.

JRM: What was the process that led you to create Each Bearing out? Did you set out to write a
collection or did you write poems and then one day realized that there was a collection? I noticed
that several poems found homes in journals first.
RB:Thank you, Jone, for reaching out to me and sending me these questions.
So much of this journey for me has been one of permission. I was finally writing again,
after a long silence, and it took me a while to acknowledge to myself that I was writing
poetry. I hadn’t written poetry since my undergraduate years—I studied fiction in
graduate school and had only ever published in nonfiction. But I was writing a lot of
poems I referenced as my “mom poems.” They felt very personal, like small snapshots
caught from the blur. Eventually, I had so many that I began to think about making a
small book.

JRM: Have you always been interested in the natural world? I noticed you are originally from Idaho.
How did growing up in Idaho play a part in your writing life?
RB: I grew up in Boise, Idaho but moved away over twenty years ago. I’d always planned to
go back, but life gets complicated and that distance between my original home and my
home now informs a lot of my writing. I think my interest in the natural world has grown
deeper through my experience of mothering. My kids were curious, input seeking
creatures and seeing the world through their eyes is what’s really brought me back to
noticing, and paying attention to the natural world.

JRM: I was really struck by the poem “Good Housekeeping”. I struggle with keeping house, writing
and being engaged with my family.  Add the concerns about the environment, it really gets
overwhelming. What is one event that led you to write that poem?
RB: “Good Housekeeping” resonated with a lot of my friends who have been busy mothering
through these last years. It was originally published with the tag line “America during
Covid, during Trump.” There has been such a constant tumult these last several
years—political, social, environmental. I would be trying to do the most ordinary thing
like decorate for Halloween or vacuum and just feel this redundant dread, as if I were
participating in a great pretending that lets us go on believing everything is fine. The
question, for me, is still a constant—how do we mother these children toward a future we
can’t even begin to fathom?

JRM: Could you share with readers your process with how you decided the order of the poems?
RB: Mostly instinct. I read them out loud, a lot, and paid particular attention to what would be
the first and last poem. I printed them out and sorted them physically, by hand, all down
the hallway in my basement. From there, I semi-sorted them chronologically according to
my children’s ages in the poems, which left me with a burgeoning teenager by the book’s
end.

JRM: Were there poems that didn’t make the book? How did you decide which poems were in and
which needed to be held for a different space? Are you planning a second book?
RB: Yes! So many didn’t make it. Poems I felt were weaker or redundant…or too sentimental.
I have so many poems about my kids, it is really how I’ve found a way to hold my own
memory of these years. I also asked two friends, Liona Burnham and Ruth Lehrer, to read
through a near-to-final draft and tell me their suggestions. It was easier to know what to
leave out than what to leave in! I am working on my second book already—about
landscape and distance, origin and loss.

JRM: How did Laura Shovan’s February Poetry Month inspire you?
RB: Laura Shovan’s February Poetry Month arrived in my life at just exactly the right time
and inspired me entirely to keep writing and to trust in my own voice and the power of
showing up to the page. I had been working in such solitude and suddenly I was in the
(online) company of bright, gutsy, gracious poets willing to post such new writing every
day—it made writing poetry both more magical and more ordinary. Again, I think I was
seeking permission and the poets from February Poetry Month absolutely holler their
permission at you every day you post. It’s quite a gift and I’m so grateful, every year I
participate, for Laura and for the generosity of that space.

JRM: How did “A Rock is a Rock is a Rock” come to be written? It made me feel the pain and sorrow
when your child comes home from a bad day at school, juggling schedules, dinner, and empathy.
RB: It’s an entirely true story and it’s about my boy who is all heart with arms and legs
attached. He is constant and somedays I just can’t keep up. But he is also the kind of
person who places you, in moments, in the absolute of now.

​Here's  "Rock is a Rock is a Rock"
Originally appeared online at Whale Road Review, Summer 2022
A Rock Is a Rock Is a Rock
You got your feelings hurt at school, again,
you tell me seriously
that you feel a heartbeat
thump thump thunking
in your pet rock, you swear you can.
I say it’s your own heartbeat,
in your palm, hammering.
I am straddling dinner
and your brother’s baseball game--
and you try to explain
how your best friend tried to make you
throw the stupid thing away.
I say I told you not to take it to school,
I told you, over and over,
a rock is a rock is a rock.
I almost say, out loud, baby
sometimes you’re just too much
but your breaths are coming hard,
your small chest heaves—love,
there is nothing weak about you.
I turn the stove off.
You let me hug you,
the pulse of you
barely surface deep.
When you let me hold him,
Rocky is still warm.
You believe in so many things,
even me.

JRM: What can you share with readers who are exploring writing chapbooks?
RB: Calling it a chapbook necessarily focuses your theme and scope—and that helped me get
my mind around the idea. I wasn’t trying to write a book…I was only working on a
chapbook. I read a lot of other people’s chapbooks. And I looked up contest deadlines
and used them as goalpost deadlines. I found poets whose work I admired, in literary
journals I like, and I ordered their books, scoured their bios for ideas of where to submit.
Submitting my poems before they were part of a book also provided me a sort of
scaffolding—I knew certain poems had resonance and strength.

​

Won't you join us? Sign up for the 2023 New Year Postcard Exchange.  Send five, send ten or send to all. Did you know there are 44 days until 2022 ends? Woohoo! Let's celebrate the New Year with a New Year Postcard? In Japan, it’s called Nengajo, a Japanese custom of ushering in the new year.​How It Works:

• Choose to send five, ten postcards.
• Create a postcard:  you can buy a postcard and write a poem on the other side or you can create one postcard to send to everyone (I use Walgreens or Zazzle)
• Once you get the names, send by February 1, 2023 (during the Chinese New Years)
• If you choose, you can work in the Chinese animal for 2023: The year of the Water Rabbitt. It is not required.

I have very exciting news.

It started as a disappointment, my in-person poetry reading for November 13 was canceled due to health concerns of one of the editors. However, they have decided to go with a Zoom Reading for Issue 12 of The Poeming Pigeon on Saturday, December 10 at 4:00 PST. I will be sending out the information as soon as I get a hold of it.

I’m excited because now my online poetry friends will be able to tune in.

Today,  Buffy at Buffy Silverman is hosting our poetry community.  She's sharing a sneak peak at Laura Purdie Salas' new book, Finding Family.

Last week, Heidi shared that Nov 14-20, 2022 is  Folk Tale Week.  Read about it at my juicy little universe. There are some wonderful prompts.

Today, I'm sharing a little draft that I played with for Folk Tale Week (hope fairy tales count).

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On Halloween, I shared this house as an inspiration for a 2017 poem, "The Dare".
I have been taking a class with Georgia Heard and Rebecca Kai Dotlitch about swerving in poetry.  I was playing with a prompt about giving directions to my house (which was up the street from this spooky house) that weren't really directions.  I was also thinking about something I did as a child, pretend that all fairy tale characters lived in the hallway to the bathroom and that I had access to them at night.
Here's the poem:
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Ride  a unicycle up the hill,
past the witch’s house, the one casting neighborhood spells

Find the girl with the fairy tale lane
in her bedroom, where she sleeps

Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Briar Rose,
her co-conspirators of her dreams

Leave the girl a message
written in the spindrift from last night’s storm

under the branches of the protective oak
She will respond when the moon sleeps

© draft, Jone Rush MacCulloch, 2022

Next week, please join me as I share an interview with Rebecca Brock, author of an adult collection of poetry, Each Bearing Out.  
I know Rebecca from Laura Shovan's February Poetry Group on Facebook. She just published this wonderful collection about motherhood and the natural world.

This might be a good time to say that I am alway open to doing interviews with new poetry books, I love getting the word out about books and poets