Potential Poetry
A poem by Tricia McCallum

Potential Poetry

The sky. And the sky above that.
The exchange of unmentionables between mouths.
Other people’s shame.
My friend who said we never write about anything we can ever figure out.
For him, it always involves sadness.
For me, it’s a language I search for every day.

More…
The astonishing smell of a baby’s head.
Morning coffee perfectly doctored.
Clothes fresh from the line. Mark Knopfler’s ballads.
Billie Holiday’s heartbreaking struggle.
Anthony Bourdain’s too.
The sound of someone leaving who doesn’t want to be heard.
Other voices in other rooms.
The day I decided getting out of bed was a greater effort than I could summon.
The high school dance at St. Joe’s where I stood all night against the wall
pretending it didn’t matter.
The time in Grade Six when Sister Benedict asked us what we wanted to be
and I said poet
and they all laughed.

About the Author:

Tricia McCallum is a Glasgow-born Canadian, a Huffington Post Blogger, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and Best of the Net winner. She has two poetry collections in print: The Music of Leaving (Demeter Press 2014) and Nothing Gold Can Stay: A Mother and Father Remembered (2011). She publishes her prose and poetry online and wherever she can find good homes, blogging about women’s rights, mental health, wretched jobs she’s had (and they are legion), and even more wretched blind dates (also legion).

She writes about almost anything: falcons in Ireland, elephants being traipsed through the Queen’s Midtown Tunnel, stray island dogs, beleaguered mothers, small town beauty queens, and ill-mannered neurosurgeons. Underlying it all is her curiosity about how people navigate their lives and what it is they struggle with under the surface.

Poetry Breakfast is an online journal publishing poetry and short plays.
If you’d like your poems considered for publication visit our Poetry Submissions page.

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