Critique Response
There are certain profound, even
confounding gifts that you own
that you may end up giving away
without realizing it.
Never utilized to capacity by anyone else
just the creator themselves.
These are unwanted presents gifted to you
like bleeding. Fully connects
like an umbilical chord.
Immortal, unique talents.
It’s not to say that someone
who gets the closest sense of it
does not reap the reward and feel the ‘work’.
If not intellectually trivialized
then others can feel the work.
A very individual response.
Aunt Mae – this is your sister
Roses cultivated and grown sit atop the gravesite
of what seemed a mysterious stranger
until years passed beyond, to understand
my mother’s secret space. Her place to bake, sew
to draw, to plant – a rose, a tulip, a daisy
Wilting, dried up wrinkled stamens reseed, then
re-weed before the burning fire drove us off
Roses sit atop the gravesite. My mother’s ashes
early loss of brother, of son, of self
She may have bloomed longer, larger
even brighter. As I understand now, mother
from my secret space of writing
Apnea
My purpose returns at 2 AM.
Beyond the living, underneath the dead
there is a cause, a curse, a release
for me, that is a depth of feeling
reeling in emotions and words
of your joy, your despair, your hollow
shallow one day and rich
deep, next day
Your mental state, your sobriety, your lovers
your father’s grave, your
prejudices given and received
My reckoning. I’m tired. Damn you
and your poetry at 2 AM.
Tracy Duffy’s poetry reveals firsthand life experience and observation as an art of expression. She has lived in PA, NY and Florida, raised two daughters while writing and working in cosmetology, management and medical service. Published in Bacopa, Writers Alliance of Gainesville; P’AN KU, The BCC Student Literary/Arts Magazine and Tiny Seed Literary Journal; Open Door Magazine Summer 2024, Labyrinth; Anti-Heroin Chic; Passage; The Sandy River Review; The Bluebird Word; The RavensPerch.
