Poetry by Jo Angela Edwins

               ​Lorraine Adeline. CC



Diaries 
 
I don’t remember which day I learned 
my uncle touched his daughters, 
who, by the time I came along, 
were grown and living lives 
adults lived—a thing I found at once 
frightening and delightfully 
mysterious, as is everything 
a child misunderstands. 
 
Once I cowered in the bathtub, 
half-washed, watching my mother wrench 
her right arm from my father, 
turn her face just as his hand 
slammed against her ear, 
this only time I saw such things 
one time beyond enough, 
my grade-school self ducking behind 
the ripped shower curtain, 
and still I couldn’t tell you 
the day, the month, the year. 
 
Sometimes I’ve heard my own voice 
screech in anger at young children, 
loved ones bound in heavy beds 
their bodies could not rise from, 
friends who meant well but nonetheless 
made persistent mistakes. 
 
Then after a breath, I’ve understood 
how it felt to hear those razored words-
a wounded spirit trapped in the room 
or a stunned eavesdropper 
through windows or cracked doors. 
I’ve wondered who of us, inside or out, 
would find ourselves remembering someday 
color, texture, scent, sound… 
forgetting the drooping calendar, the mechanical  
spin of unnoticed second hands. 
​​

Jo Angela Edwins has published poems in various venues, recently including Breakwater Review, Thimble Literary Magazine, Tether's End, West Trestle Review, and Funicular. Her chapbook Play was published in 2016. She has received awards from Winning Writers, Poetry Super Highway, and the SC Academy of Authors and is a Pushcart Prize, Forward Prize, and Bettering American Poetry nominee. She lives in Florence, SC, where she serves as poet laureate of the Pee Dee region of the state.

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