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    The Wife/Mom
    The Wife/Mom
    The Wife/Mom
    Ebook177 pages1 hour

    The Wife/Mom

    By KJ Hannah Greenberg

    ()

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    About this ebook

    It is not so effortless for women to integrate their roles. Whereas women are pushed to “accomplish,” they are simultaneously chided for embracing traditional female functions.

    Women who have advanced degrees, 401Ks, or late model sports cars receive more positive feedback from men, and from women, who have taken on “men’s jobs,” than do gals who deign to define themselves by: how actively they engage in communication with their spouses, how mindfully they proceed through their pregnancies, and how well they nurture their sons, daughters, and, later, their grandchildren. Simply, as a society, we’ve made girls into boys, while dismissing any reverence we had for girls.

    The Wife/Mom explores possible answers to this dilemma by addressing communal stances on both visible and hidden, gender-based strata. This assemblage of poetry puts front and center our culture’s need to return to cherishing women as “women” and to esteeming “womanly” goings-on, per se. In these poems, females might be intrepid visionaries laboring in complex math, might be maestros of major orchestras, or might be Olympic athletes, but they are beloved first and foremost for being women.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMy Seashell Books - Michele L. Hinton
    Release dateJul 6, 2019
    ISBN9780463853597
    The Wife/Mom
    Author

    KJ Hannah Greenberg

    KJ Hannah Greenberg used to be an academic. She earned a Ph.D. in rhetoric and specialized in communication ethics. As well, Hannah was a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholar at Princeton University and a reviewer for The American Journal of Semiotics.Upon moving to Israel, Hannah morphed into a creative writer.Subsequently, she was nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize inLiterature and once for The Best of the Net in Literature. Among hermany books are the essay collections:Tosh: Select Trash and Bosh of Creative Writing (Crooked Cat Books, 2017)Dreams are for Coloring Books: Midlife Marvels (Seashell Books, 2017)Word Citizen: Uncommon Thoughts on Writing, Motherhood & Life in Jerusalem (Tailwinds Press, 2015)Jerusalem Sunrise (Imago Press, 2015)Oblivious to the Obvious: Wishfully Mindful Parenting (French Creek Press, 2010)Conversations on Communication Ethics (Praeger, 1991)Simple Gratitudes (Propertius Press, 2018, Forthcoming)Rivka Gross née Greenberg is a full-time mother, a full-time teacher, and a full-time graduate student. In her spare time, she writes across the spectrum about both real and imagined aspects of life. Her work can be found in The Jerusalem Post, Chabad.org, Tachlis Magazine, and in books such as Jerusalem Sunrise (Imago Press, 2015).

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      Book preview

      The Wife/Mom - KJ Hannah Greenberg

      Preface

      It is not so effortless for women to integrate their roles. Whereas women are pushed to accomplish, they are simultaneously chided for embracing traditional female functions.

      Women who have advanced degrees, 401Ks, or late model sports cars receive more positive feedback from men, and from women, who have taken on men’s jobs, than do gals who deign to define themselves by: how actively they engage in communication with their spouses, how mindfully they proceed through their pregnancies, and how well they nurture their sons, daughters, and, later, their grandchildren. Simply, as a society, we’ve made girls into boys, while dismissing any reverence we had for girls.

      The Wife/Mom explores possible answers to this dilemma by addressing communal stances on both visible and hidden, gender-based strata. This assemblage of poetry puts front and center our culture’s need to return to cherishing women as women and to esteeming womanly goings-on, per se. In these poems, females might be intrepid visionaries laboring in complex math, might be maestros of major orchestras, or might be Olympic athletes, but they are beloved first and foremost for being women.

      This book celebrates leaky breasts, postpartum vaginas, and the complexities of striving to not have a favorite child. Likewise, this work insists that we embrace the activities of women, not in lieu of the activities of men, but in addition to them. In these pages, electing to drink pickle juice is as important as being able to order 1947 Domaine Faiveley Musingy Grand Cru. Here, homespun rhetoric gets valued alongside of sophisticated, political maneuvering. In this collection, the assorted emotions indigenous to the finer gender get played out not as hysteria, but as probable, important responses to significant, human moments.

      The Wife/Mom posits that we ought not to incarcerate ladies in insane asylums or to minimize their convergent media sound bites. Female views must count.

      Whereas there’s nothing theoretically wrong with women venturing into space, growing up to be publishers, or running the kitchens of fine restaurants, there is much, which is matter-of-factly incorrect, with upbraiding women for choosing to spend some or all of their time taking care of their families. Hence, in The Wife/Mom, being a committed partner and being a mother receive all manner of long overdue applause.

      KJ Hannah Greenberg

      Jerusalem, 2019

      Acknowledgements:

      This book is dedicated to my students. Without you, I would not be caused, again and again, to be mindful: about why I write in the manner in which I do, about exactitudes in my creation of texts, or about extensive rewriting. Thank-you for: your curiosity, your interest, and your ability. You empower me as a writing teacher and catalyze my manuscripts.

      Introduction: The Wife/Mom

      While watering the herb garden, I interface,

      Ponder outrageous emails, childhood friends,

      Petunias tasted nightly by bold groundhogs,

      Plus dream of baths with fastened doors,

      Candles, music, oleaginous soap, and spin

      Fantasies of snow vacations, as school,

      Dripping noses, hot cocoa rings, get flouted.

      By mistake, our dear kitty’s gotten locked in

      That closet, where unmatched socks hang about,

      Also, random towel collections skulk, await my

      Punctilious lover to engage me in meaningful

      Talk about ill-placed baby gates, smelly healing

      Tinctures, the family’s uneven back porch tiles,

      Maybe the joys of dogs slurping toilet water.

      Later, blanket thieves on tippy toes, discover

      Our living room’s screes, our furniture mountains.

      They painted the grout mauve, slung lights under

      Covers, created kitchen polders, campaigned to stay

      Awake past eight, nine, ten, until nearly forever.

      Nose down in dollar books, they snore like ravens.

      Morning brings banister slides, some head first.

      Hubby’s rock and roll music, toenail clippings,

      Poison ivy rash, lovemaking, following his filling

      Up with popcorn, willingness to drive carpool

      En route to work, as well as his memory games,

      Focusing on romance, thwarted grocery shopping,

      Again, last night. I remain the riparian between

      Domesticity and waywardness as the wife/mom.

      Table of Contents

      Preface

      Acknowledgements

      Introduction: The Wife/Mom

      1. Personal Spheres

      The Five to Eight Parent

      Hela

      Summer Bride

      Abandoned at the Insane Asylum

      Fantastic and Incendiary

      Superimposed

      The Wanderer

      Geeky Bitterness

      Looking at You Looking at Him

      Life’s Progressions

      Geese

      On Hanging Laundry

      We Walk Honeysuckle Plus Jasmine

      Natural Death

      Wild Mama

      White Hairs Dance the Zambra

      Personal Rules of Interpretation

      To Give to You My Years

      2. Bud

      I Observed the World

      Hold my Hand

      Trees Yield

      Me and Super Fool: Surprise Catharsis for an Adolescent’s Imaginings

      Chickaree’s Dais

      Lava Bits Dancing: Lovers’ Lament

      Primeval Battles’ Lessons

      So, Sometimes We Fail

      Where This Assemblage Succeeds

      Duties Indigenous to Possessing a Magical Stone

      Marked Distress and Impairment

      Death of Slowpoke

      A Recession-Proof Job

      Words

      Lost Potential after Lambing

      Fritzi: A Child’s Comfort

      Puppies’ Playful Stance

      Kitten

      3. Interpersonal Spheres

      At Three, the World Attempted Me

      The Queen Postured

      Spoiled Family Traditions

      So Many Do-Bees

      For Annmarie: Loving Cysts Forever and Always

      Lady Beasts Scurrying Beneath Social Gravities

      Perhaps Whale Neurons: Life-Saving Work

      Perspicacious Girls

      Horse Whisperings

      Penguin Rhapsody

      Far Stars

      Floccinaucinihilipilification.

      We’ve Learned It’s Moot

      Words that Glide Past Cryptid Hunters

      Because of the Debauchery in Their Homes: Unwarranted Cultural Snobbery

      Death by Almond Butter

      Acts of Ethical Communication

      Economically Confused

      4. Flower

      To Deter Distance’s Cravings

      Deconstructing Literature’s Intercultural Mythos

      Nonetheless, Encouraged States

      Growing Like Lemongrass

      Sansen Sessions and Woodland Sprints

      A Vanity Press or a Piece of Self-publishing Software

      The Elusiveness of a Royal Title

      Except for the Lops

      Where the Woods Part

      Asymptotic Nonsense

      Marcelled

      Broken Mouse Ears

      Palimony’s Worse

      Me and My Lonesome

      The City Man, His Lecture Notes, The Flesh Menagerie

      While Dancing Elsewhere the Mortise and Tenon

      Getting Sieved

      His One Hundred Styles

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