Tag: adult children

Two Poems by Todd Matson

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Outgoing Message

Hello, you have reached mother.

If you need me to send money, press 1.

If you need to borrow my car, press 2.

If you wrecked your car and need me
to cosign for another car, press 3.

If you were evicted and need me
to cosign for another rental, press 4.

If you are in jail and need me to pay
your bail, press 5.

If you need me to hire a lawyer, press 6.

If you need me to secure a home equity
loan to pay for legal fees and rehab, press 7.

If you are just calling to say hello or
ask how I’m doing, I’m sorry, I didn’t
think to add an extension for that.

Have a nice day.

*

Breadwinners

I make all the money.
She doesn’t earn a penny.
That is what I told her
whenever I felt the need to
remind her of the basic facts.
My wife, mother of my children –
she gets to stay home all day.

How does she spend all her
free time? One day, I made
the mistake of asking her.

I work as a cook, housekeeper,
childcare worker, tutor, nurse,
crisis counselor, laundry worker,
driver, personal assistant…

I interrupted her there.
She didn’t stop there.

If we had to hire a cook,
housekeeper, childcare worker,
tutor, nurse, crisis counselor,
laundry worker, driver and
personal assistant to do what
I do it would cost us $150,000
per year. I do math too. Where’s
my $150,000 salary?

I stopped saying
I make all the money.

*

Todd Matson is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in North Carolina, United States. His writings have been published in Feminine Collective, Salvation South, Breathe, The Clayjar Review, Agape Review, Redrosethorns, San Antonio Review, The Brussels Review, The Shallot: Journal of Mental Health, Art, and Literature; WestWard Quarterly, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, FEED THE HOLY; Faith, Hope and Fiction; Soul Poetry, Prose & Arts Magazine; Solid Food Press, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, Neon & Smoke, Sublimation and Epistemic Literary Magazine. He has also written lyrics for songs recorded by several contemporary Christian music artists.

My Daughter with MS Has Another MRI by Terri Kirby Erickson

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

My Daughter with MS Has Another MRI

For Gia

Soon my daughter will slip into those loose
pajamas sans her silver earrings, necklaces,
and bracelets, as well as the funky shoes she
often finds in thrift stores. She will lie down
on a narrow table which slides into an MRI
with an IV filled with contrast dripping into
her vein. And surrounding her beloved body
that was once part of my body and still feels
that way, is a giant magnet making intermit-
tant loud noises that sound just like a herd
of stampeding horses. So my daughter will
close her eyes and pretend she’s someplace
else—perhaps a beach in Corolla where wild
mustangs roam, as images of her brain and
spinal cord are magically recorded. For me,
this is a time for prayer, for wanting to trade
places with her, for asking that she be healed.
I will approach the throne of my God on my
knees, every part of me a supplicant, a beggar
for mercy. New lesions, if there are any, may
mean more disability, pain, and suffering for
my throwback sixties yet born in the eighties,
bread-baking, bead-wearing flowerchild with
her dreamcatcher collection, piercings, and
colorful tattoos—and the kind of inner light
that no amount of contrast could ever capture.

*

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of eight collections of poetry, including The Light That Follows Us Home (Fall, 2026, Press 53). Her work has received multiple honors, including the International Book Award for Poetry, Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Nautilus Silver Book Award, Atlanta Review International Book Award, Gold Medal in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Nazim Hikmet Poetry Award, Board of Regents Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize, Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize, and many more. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, anthologies, magazines, and newspapers, including Aethlon, “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, JAMA, ONE ART, Poetry Foundation, Poet’s Market, Rattle, Sport Literate, The Christian Century, The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Verse Daily among many others. She lives with her husband in North Carolina.

Two Poems by Laura Grace Weldon

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Swedish Death Cleaning

“You can’t have everything.
Where would you put it?” ~ Steven Wright

My black hole of a bedroom closet
still holds long-impossible size eights,
tattered protest posters, slumped purses,
homemade Halloween costumes,
and hopeful eyes facing the future
from a box of black and white portraits.
Each object a doorway into realms
Where light no longer escapes.

I’ve already donated the strappy red dress
I never wore, the tie-dyed jumpsuit I did.
I gave stacks of sweaters to a friend who felts.
Sewed a sturdy quilt out of old jeans.
Cut squares from shirts too torn to donate
to patch shirts I still wear.
Time here distorts.
Decades seem mere seconds.

My arms are full with an enormity
possessions never encompass.
There’s no packing for an event horizon
but, oh look, here’s a child-decorated pillowcase
and there, a poncho I made from a shower curtain.
From this dense gravitational field
I work to excavate my own buried self
from all the women I didn’t become.

*

Look At Them Fly

My grown children may as well be
prop planes pulling banners
I squint to read
as they loop high in the sky.
They land for a bit, accept hugs,
tolerate a meal or two, some even
take leftovers I urge on them.

My love is larger than
any of us can fully bear.
It’s a fact immutable as the moon
drifting farther from Earth
at the same rate fingernails grow.

Before they were born in the usual way
I calculated with the wrong variables,
equated love with grief, but becoming
a mother to these exact marvels
erased all that. I cannot do the math,
only exult in these four.

Here I am on the ground they fly from,
my hands out offering tomatoes I’ve grown,
hot sauce I fermented, the pie I hope
is the one they still like.

*

Laura Grace Weldon lives in a township too tiny for traffic lights where she works as a book editor, leads writing workshops, serves as Braided Way editor, and chronically maxes out her library card. Laura is the author of four books and was Ohio’s 2019 Poet of the Year. Her background includes teaching nonviolence, writing poetry with nursing home residents, facilitating support groups for abuse survivors, and writing sardonic greeting cards. Laura lives on a small Ohio homestead where she and her husband host occasional art parties and house concerts. lauragraceweldon.com