Death in Spring
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After the news of a death, on a spring morning, I wrote this poem. Loss in the season of birth reverberates with dissonance. Everything blooming and beginning, a life ended, a loved one gone. There was a sharp contrast that day, which allowed me to feel and grieve in such a specific way. I recorded this poem at the Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia where I often walk my dog, a place where I experience beauty and decay, sadness and wonder.
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Mónica Gomery is the author of Might Kindred (University of Nebraska Press, 2022), and Here is the Night and the Night on the Road (Cooper Dillon Books, 2018). Her writing has received the Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker Book Prize, the American Poetry Review Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize, and the Palette Poetry Sappho Prize for Women Poets. Recent poems appear in Kenyon Review, Poetry Northwest, and West Branch. She lives on unceded Lenni Lenape land in Philadelphia, where she serves as a rabbi at Kol Tzedek synagogue.
Insta: @dancingmobot
monicagomerywriting.com