Tag: Elizabeth S. Wolf

It’s Complicated by Elizabeth S. Wolf

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It’s Complicated

          On my 20th birthday, my Dad, while in jail,
          traded his last pack of cigarettes at 7:30am
          to call me at the exact time that I was born.
          — from my daughter’s eulogy to her father

In this blue-hued kitchen’s waning light
a counter lined with containers of cookies,
candy, and chips. The humming fridge filled with
half empty take-out containers and catering
leftovers. The remains of my older brother’s
bottle of bourbon (was he unable to navigate
a 3-day visit without booze?). Around the house
arrangements of flowers are quietly dying,
dropping white rose petals, hydrangea corymbs,
fronds of ferns, baby’s breath, like discarded glitter.
A few days ago at the memorial we gathered
to hear eulogies and memories and listen
to all that was said and unsaid. His sobriety sponsor
described delivering a 6-year chip to the hospital.
In my mind I calculate how many years not sober;
how many trips to rehab, to jail; how many supervised
visitation orders, supervised living quarters;
how many hikes up mountains, canoe rides
down winding rivers, counting deer and birds
in the rustling woods, with perspective
eye-level to the ground. It is complicated
to honor a tormented man, a man who was loved,
a man who battled multiple addictions most of his life,
who married his rage and divorced his wife.
At meetings held in churches, conference rooms,
correctional facilities, in quiet conversations
in bright kitchens over bitter coffee, it is said:
it’s harder to mourn for the living than the dead.

*

Elizabeth S. Wolf has published 6 books, including the recently released Parenting in the Age of Columbine (2025). Elizabeth has placed over 160 poems and stories and received 4 Pushcart nominations. Her Did You Know? was a 2018 Rattle Chapbook Prize winner. Rattle Summer 2022 featured her project with Prisoner Express. In 2023 Elizabeth taped readings at the White House, Supreme Court, and US Capitol with The Scheherazade Project. Her video poem “April 1999” was screened at the Poetry in Motion Festival 2024 in Colorado. Her work has landed on the moon with the Lunar Codex.

Two Poems by Elizabeth S. Wolf

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Shattered

Coming home from college,
crouched down on the kitchen floor,
she wouldn’t couldn’t look me in the eye
she wouldn’t couldn’t tell me why
her blanket was a tangled bundle stained with vomit
but I knew, a woman knows, a mother doesn’t want to
so I asked, did someone try to hurt you and then
said what I really meant, did someone try to rape you
and she nodded, head averted looking down
         he was choking me
                  but it stopped when I threw up
and she whispered no one believed and Andi
blamed me for ruining her goodbye party and I
guess I had it coming since I was just starting to
feel kind of good about myself and I felt pretty
and I was having fun and I guess I went too far
and a mother’s heart sinks
bile rising up your throat
because this shouldn’t still be happening
and I know that late-teen type of cocky
that heady joy of looking good
that tastes almost like tossing back
a shot of pure verve— that rush
of coming into your own self—
a righteous confidence that
never comes back the same
once the spell is broken.

* 

At Seventeen

I borrowed my mother’s car, a cherry red Buick Skylark
circa 1971. It was the first anniversary of my father’s death
but instead of demurely lighting a Yahrzeit candle I took off
to see a boy, a hot boy, a rad boy, a bit-of-a-dangerous
bad boy, who was staying with friends; we had all scattered
when the halfway house for troubled teens suddenly totally
closed. We met up and headed out into a steamy summer night.
He broke into a stacked rack of mailboxes, looking for checks;
broke into a holy Catholic church, seeking silver and gold;
broke into me, brusque with lust; recklessly ran a red light
and smashed the car, high-style bumper and driver-side doors
dented and scratched, stolid white upholstery stained by
splotches of blood. I waited for sunrise to return the keys;
my mother rolled over in her empty bed and asked me to
leave. Later the doctor stitching me up would laugh:
Tell your boyfriend to be more careful next time.
For years after I lit a commemorative candle, a tall taper
stuck in the graceful green neck of an empty bottle, dripping
wax melting and merging, colors converging, layers emerging
year after year like the rings of a tree, latewood circling
spring growth, rising high above riddles of sealing or healing.

*

Elizabeth S. Wolf has published 5 books of poetry, most recently I Am From: Voices from the Mako House in Ghana (2023). Her chapbook Did You Know? was a Rattle prizewinner. Rattle Summer 2022 featured her project with Prisoner Express. In 2023 Elizabeth taped readings at the White House, Supreme Court, and US Capitol with The Scheherazade Project. In 2024 her work landed on the moon with the Lunar Codex. Learn more at https://www.amazon.com/author/esw