Saturday Poetry – ‘Grow’ by Ruth Ellen Kocher
Saturday Poetry – ‘Grow’ by Ruth Ellen Kocher
This week’s Saturday Poetry brings you the soul-stirring poem titled ‘Grow’ by Ruth Ellen Kocher. Kocher is the author of several poetry collections, including Third Voice (Tupelo Press, 2016), Ending in Planes (Noemi Press, 2014), and Goodbye Lyric: The Gigans and Lovely Gun (Sheep Meadow Press, 2014). She lives in Colorado.
About this poem, she said “At the end of 2020, I conquered some big life goals and looked forward to my future. But 2021 brought the end of a cherished friendship, then my marriage. In November, I found myself in an ambulance on my way to life-saving surgery for a cervical spinal abscess. I paced my house for two months with an IV bag, feeling hollow. When the onion began to sprout, I measured its progress each day. I couldn’t bring myself to use it. The onion gave me something to look forward to—a small triumph growing on the counter. I wanted to feel triumph again.”
For this edition of Saturday Poetry, we have paired Kocher’s emotive words with mobile art by the talented @linmay191 with the captivating artwork complementing the poem’s essence beautifully, creating a symphony of emotions.
To view the others we have published in this section, go here.
via Poets.org
‘Grow’ by Ruth Ellen Kocher
I have a red onion in a green bowl on my kitchen counter
sprouting a green stalk that began as a little green haystack
bump, a knobby cyst, really, that broke surface, felt like what
I imagine I’m feeling for when I rub my breasts in the shower,
my eyes closed as if water is a blindfold allowing me to feel
within that dark any small homicide growing within me. I can’t
bring myself to use the onion, to gnash its skin, to whack off
its hard-on-gooseneck like I’m suddenly death’s
scythe, death’s brindled pet, death’s dappled good-girl. Maybe,
the onion believes in something, imagines itself still wild,
or holds in its layers the delusion of lilacs or iris or
goldenrod or blueberry or some other rambling growth
redacting my sense of abandon, here, in this too-large house,
a-lone-ly, not like a battle with silence way-of-alone-ness but
a passage. Quiet. Sometimes bright, sometimes dim, so, foreign.
I am a theft waiting to happen, a rotten spell visioning
the onion’s end. Salt. Oil. Softly seared particulate
endings. Oh, onion, circular cycle, joy-halo. Grow.
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Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: [email protected]
