Fact and Fiction

My parents in awe of their new son.

Many thanks to the publishers of Wordrunner for including two of my poems in their new echapbook, Upheavals, which you can read here.

One of the pieces is about a pregnant woman leaving her husband. Pure fiction. I call the woman "my grandmother" in this poem, but my grandmother never stormed out of the house flapping a dish towel. Or at least not that I know of.

The second poem is simply a list of details my mom has told me about my birth, including the popcorn she ate the evening before and my inability to breathe in the first moments after I was born. This is a factual piece, and yet I've added some details of my own. I don't know, for instance, what my dad was wearing that night, but I call it a "cranberry" cardigan because he always told me how over the moon he was to have a daughter as well as two sons, and I associate cranberries with celebrations - a family gathered around a table. Were my brothers really cold when they stood outside and waved to our mother, who was standing in a window? Who knows, but that image felt right to me.

As for the grandmother poem, my real grandmother was a tough, spirited lady, so maybe there's a hint of truth in this piece after all: An example of fact and fiction playing hide and seek between lines.