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A review by beastreader
How to Love the Empty Air by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
4.0
I thought this was a nice collection of poems. I enjoyed reading them. Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz really embraced the essence of love and loss of a mother. A truly heartfelt collection of poems. Some I liked more than others.
There is "My Mother Wants to Know if I'm Dead". Anyone who has a close relationship with their Mother can relate to this poem.
It goes like this:
ARE YOU DEAD? is the subject line of her email. The text outlines the numerous ways she thinks I could have died: slain by an axe-murderer, lifeless on the side of the highway, choked to death by smoke since I'm a city girl and likely didn't realize you needed to open the chimney flue before making a fire (and, if I do happen to be alive, here's a link to a YouTube video on fireplace safety that I should watch). Mom muses about the point of writing this email. If I am already dead, which is what she suspects, I wouldn't be able to read it. Any if I'm alive, what kind of daughter am I not to write her own mother to let her know that I've arrived at my fancy residency, safe and sound, and then to immediately send pictures of everything, like I promised her! If this was a crime show, she posts, the detective might accuse her of sending this email as a cover up for murder. How could she be the murderer, if she wrote an email to her daughter asking if she was murdered? her defense lawyers would argue at the trial. In fact, now that she thinks of it, this email is the perfect alibi for murdering me. Any that is something I should definitely keep in mind, of I don't write her back as soon as I have a fee goddamn second to spare.
Here is a little bit of the poem "On Getting Facials with My Mother"
Both of us trying to breathe deep, let go. Somewhere, years are being erased from my mother's face. She tells the facialist about me, her daughter, the writer down the hall. How we don't do stuff like this. How much we need it. After an hour, we're reunited. She looks beautiful: stripped down and glowing.
We put on our clothes and yes, we swallow hard when the cashier gives us the total, but we shake it off. We wear our new faces right into the sun, just like
we're told not to do. We can't help it.
The air feels too good, the future so bright.
"O Laughter"
O, Laughter, you are not forgotten.
My body is the jam jar you flew into.
You thought it'd be so sweet. You didn't realize it was made by crushing the most gentle of things. O, Laughter, Grief sees itself as a knife, carving out what needs to be seen.
See yourself as an ice skater, the knives on your feet. Sometimes the pain bursts out of me like a flock of starlings.
My throat releases everything but you. Laughter, be the slyest magician. Make me think it's easy work: this levitation.
I'll willingly step into the box, if you'd just cut me in half, spin my parts around, then make me whole again.
There is "My Mother Wants to Know if I'm Dead". Anyone who has a close relationship with their Mother can relate to this poem.
It goes like this:
ARE YOU DEAD? is the subject line of her email. The text outlines the numerous ways she thinks I could have died: slain by an axe-murderer, lifeless on the side of the highway, choked to death by smoke since I'm a city girl and likely didn't realize you needed to open the chimney flue before making a fire (and, if I do happen to be alive, here's a link to a YouTube video on fireplace safety that I should watch). Mom muses about the point of writing this email. If I am already dead, which is what she suspects, I wouldn't be able to read it. Any if I'm alive, what kind of daughter am I not to write her own mother to let her know that I've arrived at my fancy residency, safe and sound, and then to immediately send pictures of everything, like I promised her! If this was a crime show, she posts, the detective might accuse her of sending this email as a cover up for murder. How could she be the murderer, if she wrote an email to her daughter asking if she was murdered? her defense lawyers would argue at the trial. In fact, now that she thinks of it, this email is the perfect alibi for murdering me. Any that is something I should definitely keep in mind, of I don't write her back as soon as I have a fee goddamn second to spare.
Here is a little bit of the poem "On Getting Facials with My Mother"
Both of us trying to breathe deep, let go. Somewhere, years are being erased from my mother's face. She tells the facialist about me, her daughter, the writer down the hall. How we don't do stuff like this. How much we need it. After an hour, we're reunited. She looks beautiful: stripped down and glowing.
We put on our clothes and yes, we swallow hard when the cashier gives us the total, but we shake it off. We wear our new faces right into the sun, just like
we're told not to do. We can't help it.
The air feels too good, the future so bright.
"O Laughter"
O, Laughter, you are not forgotten.
My body is the jam jar you flew into.
You thought it'd be so sweet. You didn't realize it was made by crushing the most gentle of things. O, Laughter, Grief sees itself as a knife, carving out what needs to be seen.
See yourself as an ice skater, the knives on your feet. Sometimes the pain bursts out of me like a flock of starlings.
My throat releases everything but you. Laughter, be the slyest magician. Make me think it's easy work: this levitation.
I'll willingly step into the box, if you'd just cut me in half, spin my parts around, then make me whole again.