The best writing advice I’ve ever been given
is to avoid poems about motherhood.
Too sappy. Too sentimental. I agree.
Which is why I only write poems about
myself bare chested on a hunt,
dragging my latest kill
back to my cabin
and feasting
on what I can
only describe
as truth. No room in this cabin
for a nursery or
a metaphorical child
who sleeps when I
sleep and on waking
looks at me not as creator
but as created, singing some ancient
song in the moonlight.
—Luisa Muradyan
Luisa Muradyan, originally from Odesa, Ukraine, is the author of American Radiance.
