Jessamine O'Connor lives on the Sligo Roscommon border in the West of Ireland. Her collection 'Silver Spoon' is published by Salmon Poetry, and she has chapbooks with Nine Pens Press and the Black Light Engine Room press. She is an editor with Drunk Muse Press, The Poet's Republic, and was on the editorial team for the inaugural Scrimshaw. Her debut novel is forthcoming with Lilliput Press.

Jessamine O'Connor

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I Keep Writing About My Mother and Not My Friend's Mother

Because my mother's destruction is interior,
her suffering, no one could do more to alleviate:
not the army of nurses and therapists, these twice-a-day carers,
even the state. There is no wilful harm being done,
no attacks in the night, no starvation.

This other mother also has adult daughters
and had a house and garden,
pride, dignity, determination
but her resilience goes unrewarded, there are no cards or flowers
in Gaza now. She survives another day, and another,
evading tanks, snipers, and orders to evacuate
to nowhere.

Her fight is remaining alive
despite all efforts to exterminate her, and my mother's
is in reaching out from the collapse.