Family Poetry

Poetry created for Astrid, my grandchild.

Her son is left behind in a store by her husband. Again, and again. What is Heidi Esther gonna do to fix her husband this time? She desperately tries to go back to the bliss of ignorance in her perfect suburban marriage. But, with a new bestie, her pastor, and an unexpected coworker at her side, she comes face-to-face with what she’s left behind. And what she discovers about herself and her life leave her awake, breathless, surrounded by Kleenex, and learning from trees.

Bestselling author and mom blogger Bunmi Laditan vulnerably shares the prayers she's prayed for her children as inspiration for your own prayer life. Refreshingly relatable, bravely honest, and deeply heartwarming, Help Me, God, I'm a Parent meets you right where you're at and gives voice to the thoughts everyone--even you--has about parenthood that they are afraid to say out loud.

Across three sequences, Joshua Bennett’s new book recalls and reimagines social worlds almost but not entirely lost, all while gesturing toward the ones we are building even now, in the midst of a state of emergency, together. Bennett opens with a set of autobiographical poems that deal with themes of family, life, death, vulnerability, and the joys and dreams of youth.

Radiant and tender, My Baby First Birthday is a collection that examines innocence, asking us who gets to be loved and who has to deplete themselves just to survive. It's about existence and nonexistence, about being born - without consent. Jenny Zhang writes about accepting pain, about the way we fetishize womanhood and motherhood, and reduce women to their violations, traumas, and body parts.

Carole and Jeffery Boston Weatherford’s ancestors are among the founders of Maryland. Their family history there extends more than three hundred years, but as with the genealogical searches of many African Americans with roots in slavery, their family tree can only be traced back five generations before going dark. And so from scraps of history, Carole and Jeffery have conjured the voices of their kin, creating an often painful but ultimately empowering story of who their people were in a breathtaking book that is at once deeply personal yet all too universal.

Jagged Edges: A Journey Through Love, Reflection, and Forgiveness is a heartfelt chapbook that speaks to the soul, weaving together raw and deeply personal letters, poetry, and vignettes. Shannon S. Lesane explores the complexities of love, loss, faith, and healing, inviting listeners into moments of deep reflection on motherhood, family, resilience, and the quiet strength it takes to forgive.

This collection of poems by Jim Forbes is a rare rendering that will invite you to keep listening. Heartbreak from a failed marriage and separation from his beloved daughters both brought this poet to write during his darkest times.

Poetic Perspectives brings to parchment two decades of this author's finest poetry. Deemed the Thomas Kinkade of poetry, Wolfe pens to paper words, thoughts, ponderings, history, personal experiences, patriotism, love, and loss. He clearly expresses delight in his rhyming verse and subject matter. You will experience his artistic vision and be amazed at the brushstrokes provided by his mental mastery of life's precious moments. He will capture you and hold you in his grasp, bringing forth a tear, a smile, a deeper thought, and an awakening to some of the more important things in life.

Sometimes in your life, you meet someone special that changes everything you thought you knew about love. They may be younger or older from different religions or races. It does not matter how, why, or when. They bring a smile to your face when you had none before lighting up the darkness that you're living in. Your heart will race and your mind opens up to the distinct possibilities of anything you may have wished for or dreamed of.

A collection of over 30 poems for the entire family from kindergarten to adult. The majority of this poetry is from Common Core Appendix B: Text Exemplars and Sample Performance Tasks.

In his award-winning memoir Free Lunch, Rex Ogle’s abuela features as a source of love and support. In this companion-in-verse, Rex captures and celebrates the powerful presence a woman he could always count on—to give him warm hugs and ear kisses, to teach him precious words in Spanish, to bring him to the library where he could take out as many books as he wanted, and to offer safety when darkness closed in.

Family is one topic that Lindsey wants to avoid. She loves her family more than anything, but no one else understands their dynamic. So what if her family fights or the next meal is a big question mark? That’s all normal in the Holdermann house. When Lindsey begins a friendship with Baylee, things start to change. Her views of herself and her family all come into question. What once was so simple has Lindsey struggling to find her identity and her place in her family.

When I was in the fourth grade, we had a map of Vietnam on our kitchen wall. When my mother received an airmail letter, she would walk to the map and move one of the stickpins to a new location to see if one of her brothers was in harm’s way in some new hot spot or battle. I spent a lot of time worrying about that map. I had five uncles in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. This is a book about going off to war, a book about coming back home, and a book about those who are left behind. I dedicate this book to those voices, my family, and every voice calling out at times of war.

No Sweet Without Brine is both a soulful and celebratory collection that summons sticky sweet memories with an acrid aftertaste of deep thought. Satisfying moments are captured in odes to Idris Elba’s dulcet tones on a meditation app and the satisfaction of half-priced Entenmann’s poundcake; in childlike observations of parental Black love, the coveted female form on Jet Magazine covers, and the desire for Zamunda to be a real place full of Black joy.

Un libro sensible y descarnado que explora la infancia, el dolor sin resolver, y al primer hombre de nuestra vida. alpha es una exploración de las raíces de ese amor que nunca tuviste, del primer amor de nuestras vidas, y de cómo a veces nos pasamos la vida entera tratando de repetirlo (buscando un padre entre los hombres con los que nos cruzamos). alpha trata de relaciones familiares, sobre todo cuando no eres lo que esperan que seas.

Lloyd Jones was seven years old the first time he climbed high into a grandstand to watch rugby with his father. The experience was baptismal. From his new elevated perspective Jones believed he could see everything that mattered – a field of play that rolled out, green with promise, from suburban New Zealand to the wider world. The grandstand is a guiding metaphor for these questing narrative poems that reach back into childhood and forward into the life of a writer constantly experimenting with form and voice.

The 72 poems in this book cover many types of love: for the author’s three guide dogs, for her six children, for her parents and grandparents, for God and nature, for her many friends, and in a handful of light-hearted selections, for food. The many romantic poems express love for both real people and dream lovers and for ideals yet unattained.

Following in the footsteps of such category killers as Milk and Honey and Whiskey Words & a Shovel I, Fariha Róisín's poetry book is a collection of her thoughts as a young, queer, Muslim femme navigating the difficulties of her intersectionality. Simultaneously, this compilation unpacks the contentious relationship that exists between Róisín and her mother, her platonic and romantic heartbreaks, and the cognitive dissonance felt as a result of being so divided among her broad spectrum of identities.

With his dazzling ability to set words spinning, Amit Majmudar brings us poems that sharpen both wit and knives as he examines our "life in solitary". Equally engaged with human history and the human heart, Majmudar transfigures identity from a locus of captivity to the open field of his liberation....