Synkroniciti is glad to welcome back poet Samuel Prestridge, based in the Atlanta area, with “My Mother’s Birds,” a tender remembrance of his mother’s cognitive decline. Time softens many of the rough edges, leaving a deep sorrow tinged with beauty and humor.
“My mother saw angels, painted birds/ and angels indifferently,/ when cars she saw/ weren’t running through her house,/ when spirits weren’t tempting her to whoredom/ or trying to make deals with her for $10,000.”
Her childlikeness and irreverent innocence bear witness to the ineffable dearness of personhood. Even as the mind fails, something remains. Samuel’s imagery is not only funny, it contains a reverent awe and a willingness to see wonder in the surreal.
Read “My Mother’s Birds” in Synkroniciti’s “Patterns” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Samuel Prestridge, a post-aspirational man, is the author of A Dog’s Job of Work from Sligo Creek Publishing. His children contend that he is, with the elasticity of the definition, an adequate father.