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    Voices Through Skin
    Voices Through Skin
    Voices Through Skin
    Ebook95 pages26 minutes

    Voices Through Skin

    By Theresa Senato Edwards

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    About this ebook

    In her debut collection of poems, Theresa Senato Edwards gives voice to womanhood, from daughter and mother to warrior and lover. Through whispers and screams, her words shatter the glass of the page; and when the conversation is over, a song of strength reverberates.

    "There’s a new TSE joining the ranks of English language poets. With VOICES THROUGH SKIN, Theresa Senato Edwards establishes herself as a no-holds-barred chronicler of the gut-wrenching feelings of love, loneliness, loss, guilt, and sometimes, in the end, redemption. Only the most gifted poets can bring such searing insight into the darkest hidden corners of the human condition." - Marist College’s Gloria Brownstein

    "Theresa Senato Edwards is not afraid to place before the readers’ eyes topics of incipient delicacy as breast cancer, passionless physical responsibility sessions, death, lupus, physical abuse, those idiosyncratic ways we all face the big events in life and after. Even her style of writing invites the eye to jerk across the page and gather the momentum of her messages as though a willing captive. Secrets whispered, memories distorted by time and incidents – she touches these with a sense of veracity that makes us stop and relate. [These poems] reflect and refract light and pain and living that are contained in this volume – a book whose cover (the art of Christine Blu Ashton) boldly suggests the works inside. Once again the notable Sibling Rivalry Press has discovered and shared significant new poetry." - Amazon Reviewer Grady Harp

    "Edwards uses faceted language, a fine ear for distance, and varied poetic structure to nurture beauty from scabs and scars. She digs up a blooming, vining garden of pain, unafraid of getting her hands dirty, taking her readers through layered images of hurt (both historic and personal), and guiding our fingers over the worried notch on her childhood door, drawing us into a ‘smooth wooden pool of calm.’ Hers is a work of terrible beauty." - Annmarie Lockhart, Editor of vox poetica

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSibling Rivalry Press
    Release dateFeb 1, 2012
    ISBN9781937420154
    Voices Through Skin
    Author

    Theresa Senato Edwards

    Theresa Senato Edwards lives in Poughkeepsie, New York, with her family. She teaches and tutors at Marist College. Theresa is also founding editor/publisher of Holly Rose Review.

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      Book preview

      Voices Through Skin - Theresa Senato Edwards

      mind

      Back Seat, 1965, Forward, Back

      She looks through the top edge,

      the new Ford Galaxy’s back window

      fixates

      on moving light

      white balls,

      giant pearl onions stuck to wooden posts.

      She thinks on the moon’s placement

      in the black sky, always where her eyes can see,

      moon moves with the speed of car,

      parallels controlled by destination.

      When she’s older

      she’ll meet prince charming.

      Speeding world outside, she’s on

      back seat counting. It’s safe to count, 1-2-3,

      father, son, holy spirit, 1-2-3, father,

      son, holy ghost, amen. She makes a tiny

      sign of the cross in the air with her six-year-old

      right index finger. She’ll walk with

      a limp in nine years.

      She always makes a swooping motion, outlining

      movements needed to bless the air

      inside the car. Bless the air inside the car

      inside the car. Bless

      the air

      the air

      inside the car.

      She

      reads books

      likes to hear words in air. She

      blesses the words, counting 1-2-3-

      4, needs to even the odds she counts

      to even the odds. Safe to count an

      even number of words that dissipate into

      back seat of car, Ford Galaxy,

      moon from car moves faster than galaxies,

      but she learns the moon is slow illusion

      from back seat.

      She’ll be a single mother for five years. Eat

      only what her son can’t finish.

      The American way in a Ford Galaxy

      she’ll hydroplane at 17.

      Homesick

      She wants

      colors: Dunkin Donuts signs

      comfort her,

      remind her of coffee cups

      filled with hot, sweet, milky coffee—

      Remind her of home,

      not thinking of fourth grade summer camp,

      where she had to recite a prayer three times

      or else—

      dirty water dripping down

      the washroom’s roof

      contaminates her.

      She thinks of this

      staring,

      fan grinding,

      desk shaking,

      in the small, clean room

      she rents for the week.

      Recite the prayer three times

      because once

      was never enough—

      She sleeps five hours,

      not enough time to feel like eating

      breakfast with so many strangers.

      She remembers reading

      interviews of Holocaust survivors

      (first-hand accounts).

      Captives

      drank hot, dirty, diluted brown,

      frigid mornings

      pressing—

      stomachs hardening.

      Painting Czeslawa Kwoka

      In response to Lori Schreiner’s paintings

      of Auschwitz victim Czeslawa Kwoka

      (photographed by Wilhelm Brasse) and in memory of Czeslawa

      In Brasse’s black and white photos,

      you are a young girl with a round face

      dropped into a flat, grey world,

      26947 sewn on a striped wardrobe,

      naked beneath these numbers.

      What does color bring to you?

      In color you move through our minds.

      In color you are a movie star: Mia Farrow—

      slightly protruding upper lip, swollen bottom

      forms a dense shadow to your chin.

      In color you are a young woman

      bleeding from within: pale skin

      filters red to pink. This is the

      girl you are at Auschwitz, Czeslawa.

      You are not a criminal.

      ~

      Your full color portrait

      forces our reaction—

      your

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