My friend, Penny Perry, has a new book!
The Woman with Newspaper Shoes is an exceptional book of poems by Penny Perry, an eight-time Pushcart nominee. Set in Southern California, her second collection of poems is at once memoir, cultural and period snapshot and a volume of compelling and grace-filled poems. The 104 poems, all previously published, form a chronicle of struggle, desire, loss and acceptance.
ISBN-13: 978-1-7350556-5-7 Publisher: Garden Oak Press
LCCN: 2022937588
$15
156 pages
paperback
Valerie Hastings, winner of the 2020 Steve Kowit Poetry Prize, said this about The Woman with Newspaper Shoes: "These poems are pure gold. They sing of loss and love, of the dead we carry with us and the living we work to keep alive, of survival, memory, family and, most importantly, the joy of being in the here."
Here is one of the poems from Penny Perry's new book;
THE ORDER OF THINGS
Home from college, she climbs
in the car, squints at my hair.
Her father wants me to look
glamorous like his actress friends.
I wound my hair in sponge rollers
and combed it into a stiff helmet.
I wait for her to tell me
I look stupid. She has always
been my critic-in-residence.
Daughters denigrate their mothers
so they will have the courage
to leave. The order of things.
"I love your hair, Mom," she says.
The car reeks of too sweet hair spray.
Airport palms look like movie trees
on this bright December day.
I streak onto the wrong freeway.
Cars in the next lane zip past.
She sits forward. "We're lost."
Her words anxious puffs of air.
"I want to kill myself. Let's do it together."
She smiles in conspiracy.
"You're not that happy."
Like dove-gray kindling, my fear ignites.
I glance at myself in the car mirror,
a timid woman under a foreign helmet.
She leans against me,
the sweet small weight of her
an arrow in my bow.
I will become a warrior.
I don't know it yet.
Sunglasses hide my wet eyes.
I tell my first lie.
"I know the way home."
by Penny Perry
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