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My Dad Got to Be in Charge
when my mum travelled to Ontario. He’d make us a schedule – slender pencil listing our five names, neat column with chores next to each...
J L Birch
Sep 6, 20211 min read
36 views
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Inheritance
I wasn’t my mother’s first choice to take her little dog. My sisters said in unison, No, No, when I volunteered as we ate pasta at the...
J L Birch
Jun 26, 20211 min read
59 views
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My Mother Hated "The Shape of Water"
She couldn’t say why, just snarled, Oh, it was ridiculous with all that water and the reptile lover. Just ridiculous. But I think it was...
J L Birch
Jun 26, 20212 min read
45 views
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Dawn Chorus
Frightening how a sound can stay with you – bird songs, especially before dawn. I don’t remember his name, the guy Lori coaxed me into...
J L Birch
Jun 26, 20211 min read
17 views
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Just Once
As the middle-aged black man approached us on the sidewalk, early August, my little Shih Tzu stopped, bracing her stride against my...
J L Birch
Jun 26, 20211 min read
13 views
0 comments
Evenings at Wilma's
At eleven years old, I was too young to be left alone on Friday nights. My parents brought me along to Wilma’s, their widowed friend from...
J L Birch
Jun 26, 20212 min read
17 views
0 comments
Baseball Player
I wanted my son to be a baseball player, not for the money, but for the elegance of the game, the rhythm of it, pitch after pitch,...
J L Birch
Jun 26, 20212 min read
18 views
0 comments
Intoxicating
Because sometimes late at night when you stood crying in the kitchen doorway, your father would stop calling your mother a cunt and she...
J L Birch
Jun 26, 20211 min read
20 views
0 comments
Between Us
My secret lies between us, like a corner, a pointed edge pressing against the ribs. We keep our distance in the warmth of summer, legs...
J L Birch
Jun 26, 20211 min read
11 views
0 comments
On This Night
Who can I find to scream and dance with me? My neighbor’s window flickers TV blue green. My mother is sleeping in a different time zone....
J L Birch
Feb 18, 20211 min read
18 views
0 comments
Lesbian Mom Hiking With Her Eight Year-Old Son
Hiking can be meditative; trick is finding a pace and following it. I’m not sure he hears me. Passing granite outcrops, we scramble over...
J L Birch
Feb 18, 20211 min read
15 views
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The Adoption
In the mint green hospital room, I notice every gesture of your birth family. The lilting voices, how often they pass you around, the...
J L Birch
Feb 18, 20211 min read
12 views
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One Thing My Mother Explains
At twelve, Elizabeth asked my mother about sex. Being a practical woman, she thought it best to kill two birds with one stone and so...
J L Birch
Feb 18, 20211 min read
14 views
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A Gesture
Kim turned 13 a month before I did. We got our periods that year, her boobs were bigger than mine. She smelled of Love’s Fresh Lemon. We...
J L Birch
Feb 18, 20211 min read
25 views
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Mud Hens
I hadn’t been naked in front of my mother since I was five years old. This year we took her for her first time to Calistoga. Mum, do you...
J L Birch
Feb 18, 20212 min read
6 views
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Proffer
How bold it was to suggest to my fellow poet not to use the term hairy center in her bee and apple blossom poem. Burying their bulbous...
J L Birch
Feb 18, 20211 min read
9 views
0 comments
A Movement
The Great Lakes flow from west to east. Over 1,300 feet deep in places, 183 miles wide, its fresh water draining the Canadian Shield. St....
J L Birch
Jan 7, 20211 min read
12 views
0 comments
Vestal Virgins
We walk through the streets of ancient Rome, red bricked apartments line a green lawn, stacked rooms that housed the Vestal Virgins....
J L Birch
Dec 14, 20201 min read
15 views
0 comments
Denver Women Are All Butch
You find them hiking mountain trails or passing on the left at the grocery store, with the same determination. Fleeting eye contact and a...
J L Birch
Dec 13, 20201 min read
25 views
0 comments
Conversation
So, I said to my wife, I’m losing my eyebrows. You see, very few hairs left defining where my eyebrows used to be. Don’t you think I’d...
J L Birch
Dec 13, 20201 min read
14 views
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About Author
J L Birch grew up in Canada and emigrated to the U.S. in 1984. She began writing poetry while attending the University of California, Santa Cruz in the 1990s. She has been a selected reader for In Celebration of the Muse and Poet/Speak in Santa Cruz County and has been published in the Porter Gulch Review. She lives in Denver, Colorado with her partner and their son.
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