Fawn Parker, Soft Inheritance

 

FASTING FOR GOD

I was introduced to theidea of starvation
at the mercy of men by mymother

Walking into the partingcrowd
she pointed and said,

“He loves you, he lovesyou.”
When she’s wrong I blamethe men

The way they stomp theirboots on asphalt,
on porch steps, in thebasement

Into the precious dioramamy horned father
built to cage my small,small mother

I’m presented with themicrophone
asked: what is it calledif you get the worst hand possible

My mother, beat-less,says, marriage!
and laughs. She embellishes

each time, she embellishes.

Theauthor of the fiction titles Set-Point (Winnipeg MB: ARP Books, 2019), Dumb-Show (ARP Books, 2021), the Giller Prize-nominated What We Both Know: a novel (Toronto ON: McClelland & Stewart, 2022), and the forthcoming auto-memoir Hi,it’s me (McClelland & Stewart), the first full-length poetry title byFredericton writer Fawn Parker is Soft Inheritance (Windsor ON:Palimpsest Press, 2023), published under Jim Johnstone’s Anstruther Booksimprint. I’m intrigued by the back cover quote by Toronto writer Lynn Crosbie,and there are echoes and influence in Parker’s approach to narrative content, whetherswagger or swipe, to Crosbie’s own fierce lyric: you can see it in Parker’sfirst-person storytelling slant that refuses to be held, or held back; occasionallyreactive. “My husband says there is one place I can’t / do it and I do itthere,” Parker writes, to open “POEM AGAINST MY HUSBAND,” “I don’t come, and I don’twant to / so instead I write couplets.” The poems lead with swagger, but holdthrough precise measure, as Parker crafts sharp lines of meditative,observational grace, composing short monologues across a lyric surroundinggrief, maternal loss, marriage, caretaking and how one even begins to feelsafe. As the same poem ends: “But for the love of things / I do nothing. // Mywork needs me like an infant— / this is why we understand each other.”