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Serving a little poetic nourishment Monday thru Friday and featuring a Short Play Saturday Matinee to read.

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Tricia McCallum

Starting Over – A Poem by Tricia McCallum

Starting Over
A poem by Tricia McCallum

Starting Over

I would replace the finger you lost on your right hand
working in munitions during the war.
You always hid away that hand.

Gone would be a troubled older brother 
sneaking into your room at night
and his oblivious mother.

There’d be school past the age of nine,
where you’d learn
to trust your voice, 
question authority,
emerging a woman no longer destined 
to defer, scrape,
bow.

Let’s start over.
Here’s a fighting chance.
Hell, Mom.
Here’s a head start.

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.
If you’d like your short play considered for publication visit our Short Play Submissions page.

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Minor Defects Will Not Affect Wear – A Poem by Tricia McCallum

Minor Defects Will Not Affect Wear
A poem by Tricia McCallum

Minor Defects Will Not Affect Wear

How can you care not
For this earthly life?
Even with its vagaries,
Its ragtag beginnings,
Unspeakable endings.

Remember how
The latte at the corner café that late afternoon
Arrived as the autumn light dappled your newspaper just so,
Intertwined hearts atop the foam,
Courtesy of the beaming waitress who announced
She was getting married.

You sometimes reach the bus just in time.
Blood tests come back perfectly normal.
Simple mini lights transform a sad house.
A fresh fall of snow perfects a neglected yard.

Awaken to the astonishing delights of the
Here and now.
The two-legged terrier with the tailor-made chassis,
The tired little girl in the shopping cart who smiles back,
A favorite Phil Collins song on the car radio
In the pouring rain.

There are blessings.
They must be heeded.
It doesn’t get better.
It may be enough.

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.
If you’d like your short play considered for publication visit our Short Play Submissions page.

Just for Today. A Poem by Tricia McCallum

Just for Today. 
by Tricia McCallum 

Not every last “t” needs to be crossed.
For once let a button unravel.
Perfection is a lie. A shape shifter.
It will keep you chasing after it
Like a spent greyhound after its rabbit.
Leaving you spent,
With nothing to show.
Forget the empty milk jug.
The thank you note can go unwritten.
Hospital corners are excessive.
People can live without a balsamic reduction.
And those time consuming shrimp rolls.
Pick up the store brand.
No one will notice,
And even if they did.

About the Poet:

“Poetry is my church. My refuge. Without it I wouldn’t have navigated my life nearly as well.” 

Tricia McCallum, a Glasgow-born Canadian, is a Huffington Post Blogger, a 2016 Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of The Music of Leaving (Demeter Press 2014) and Nothing Gold Can Stay:  A Mother and Father Remembered (2011).

She has won the poetry competition at goodreads.com a total of three times through the past three years, along with an honorable mention. McCallum says she publishes both online and off, wherever she can find good homes. “My approach is simple. I tell stories in my poems and write the poems I want to read,” she says.

Meanwhile, McCallum can be found online at:  www.triciamccallum.com,

facebook.com/tricia.mccallum.9 and twitter.com/triciamccallum1

The Jackknife – A Poem by Tricia McCallum

The Jackknife

Up the rungs of the diving ladder one more time,
gripping the cold, unforgiving steel
with my shriveled bare toes, nine steps to the top,
reaching, it seemed,
to the sky.

Still in his work clothes, my father stands watching
from behind the chain-link fence surrounding the pool.
I knew he was coming,
I’d practiced all day for this.

I tiptoe along the rough pebbly surface
of the board and stand shivering at the very edge;
sneak a quick glance at the water so far below
speckled eerily now with fluorescent lights,
preparing to make this one count.

It’s time.
Great lungfuls of air taken in,
the familiar flutter in my chest
as I bend my knees deeply, leaping upward
high as I can go,
then even higher, the board shuddering behind me,
trying to remember all his pointers at once:

Don’t look at the water: it’s not going anywhere,
dividing myself neatly in half,
toes touched lightly to fingers,
the uncanny feeling of suspension in mid-air,
forcing my body straight again:
Ramrod straight, now,
You’re an arrow shot at the water, then
down so fast, the world thundering past my ears,
slicing the surface crisply,
sculling quickly up,
the entire time thinking
of all that I did wrong.

On the way home I sit in gloom beside him.
He never sees my best ones, I think,
close to tears, too tired to resist.
You never see my best ones,
I say out loud without thinking.
He pulls the car over, stares at my face,
hot now with embarrassment, and reaches for the towel
to rub my long hair dry.

Lassie, he says gently,
cupping my chin in his hand.
To me, they are all your best ones.
It is all he says, and everything
a little girl needs to hear.
 

From Nothing Gold Can Stay: A Mother and Father Remembered ( 2011).

https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Gold-Can-Stay/triciamccallum

 

About the Poet:
Tricia McCallum, a Glasgow-born Canadian, is an award-winning writer and poet and frequent Huffington Post Blogger. She is the author of two books of poetry: The Music of Leaving (Demeter Press, 2014) and Nothing Gold Can Stay: A Mother and Father Remembered in 2011. McCallum also publishes fiction. Her short story “Clutter” won a Toronto Star award for fiction writing. But her unrivalled passion is poetry and is particularly proud to have twice won the member-voted poetry competition at goodreads.com. Her poems are about commonplace things, McCallum says, but she adds that they are not necessarily simple. “The abstract never drew me,” McCallum explains. “I don’t think in those terms. The day-to-day world and all its supposed mundane detail provides me more than I need. “To me it’s not mundane. To me it’s magic.” Read more of Tricia’s work at:
www.triciamccallum.com
www.huffingtonpost/triciamccallum

 

Photo by

 

Poetry Breakfast accepts submissions of poetry and poetry related creative non-fiction year-round.  See our Submission Guidelines page for details on submitting your work.

Start your morning with a nourishing poem.  Follow us on  Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr,  and enjoy a new poem every morning straight to your feed.

The Island Dog – A Poem by Tricia McCallum

The Island Dog

He is everyone’s;
Yet he is no one’s.
Vacationers arrive, discover him,
Dote on him for two weeks,
then disappear.

He is their holiday project
A story they’ll tell over dinner at home.
Some allow him in, to sleep at the foot of their beds,
to guard their front door,
Some even toy with the idea of a rescue,
Could we, should we? Shots? Papers?
Questions asked,
with the exuberance of the relaxed and the happy,
but as the time to leave draws near,
Reality encroaches, the idea stalls.

A new band takes their place,
The island dog waits,
Knowing it will take only one,
One, to give him a name that won’t change,
One, to call it out in the dark
should he wander too far.
One, to call to him
and him alone:
Come home.

 

From The Music of Leaving (Demeter Press, 2014)

https://www.amazon.com/Music-Leaving-Tricia-McCallum

 

 

About the Poet:
Tricia McCallum, a Glasgow-born Canadian, is an award-winning writer and poet and frequent Huffington Post Blogger. She is the author of two books of poetry: The Music of Leaving (Demeter Press, 2014) and Nothing Gold Can Stay: A Mother and Father Remembered in 2011. McCallum also publishes fiction. Her short story “Clutter” won a Toronto Star award for fiction writing. But her unrivalled passion is poetry and is particularly proud to have twice won the member-voted poetry competition at goodreads.com. Her poems are about commonplace things, McCallum says, but she adds that they are not necessarily simple. “The abstract never drew me,” McCallum explains. “I don’t think in those terms. The day-to-day world and all its supposed mundane detail provides me more than I need. “To me it’s not mundane. To me it’s magic.” Read more of Tricia’s work at:
www.triciamccallum.com
www.huffingtonpost/triciamccallum

 

Photo by

 

Poetry Breakfast accepts submissions of poetry and poetry related creative non-fiction year-round.  See our Submission Guidelines page for details on submitting your work.

Start your morning with a nourishing poem.  Follow us on  Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr,  and enjoy a new poem every morning straight to your feed.

At Rest – A Poem by Tricia McCallum

At Rest

He can be found at the cemetery most afternoons
for as long as he can stand the heat, or the cold.
By the hour he sits there
on a small iron bench in sight of her grave.
It is inscribed in memory of another,
yet it seems meant just for him.

On the rare days we share the bench
I am always the first to grow restless,
to suggest home.
For me it is an ominous place,
unkind.

I talk to her, he says warily,
searching my face for signs of judgment,
worry.
Talk away, I tell him;
take comfort where you can.

Together they had forged a life
in a country not their own,
bathed their babies, taken joy.
She was the only one who knew him
when he was young.

From Nothing Gold Can Stay: A Mother and Father Remembered ( 2011).

https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Gold-Can-Stay/triciamccallum

 

About the Poet:
Tricia McCallum, a Glasgow-born Canadian, is an award-winning writer and poet and frequent Huffington Post Blogger. She is the author of two books of poetry: The Music of Leaving (Demeter Press, 2014) and Nothing Gold Can Stay: A Mother and Father Remembered in 2011. McCallum also publishes fiction. Her short story “Clutter” won a Toronto Star award for fiction writing. But her unrivalled passion is poetry and is particularly proud to have twice won the member-voted poetry competition at goodreads.com. Her poems are about commonplace things, McCallum says, but she adds that they are not necessarily simple. “The abstract never drew me,” McCallum explains. “I don’t think in those terms. The day-to-day world and all its supposed mundane detail provides me more than I need. “To me it’s not mundane. To me it’s magic.” Read more of Tricia’s work at:
www.triciamccallum.com
www.huffingtonpost/triciamccallum

 

Photo by Matias Cruz.

 

Poetry Breakfast accepts submissions of poetry and poetry related creative non-fiction year-round.  See our Submission Guidelines page for details on submitting your work.

Start your morning with a nourishing poem.  Follow us on  Twitter, Facebook, and  Tumblr,  and enjoy a new poem every morning straight to your feed.

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