BROWSE Columns
✕
Mujeres, 1971, by Rufino Tamayo.
The snow in the north falls,
and melts, without the help of Niobe’s
tears. She, too, lost her children—
her weeping the sound that fills
the house when silence is absent.
When mother is tucked away,
her stone-figure of sorrow
and remembering cease
to melt the snow, piled high—
a confinement she has felt
for what feels, to her,
a lifetime. A lifetime
of wanting a particular
child’s cries never makes
her feel at home; a sea
always rising, the God
Flower failing at life—
a continuous sense
of dryness. No need
to cry now, mother. You
are stuck in a wishful
state, a forever-searching:
longing to be heard
in the night, to hear
your lost child (this one,
please, she begs).
Isabel Hoin (she/her) is an emerging poet and student at Old Dominion University where she is a Perry Morgan fellow in their MFA program. She works at The Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, VA, teaching people of all ages the art of poetry. Her work is already in or is forthcoming in Door=Jar Magazine, Blue Press Magazine, Wild Roof Journal, Chariot Press, The Fool’s World, among others. Her poem “Writing To The Silence Of Mother’s House” was nominated by ODU MFA faculty for the AWP Intro Journal Contest. You can find her at https://www.isabelhoin.com/.
