Most Read Poets 2021

Most read poets 2021 based on readership 

Two Poems by Byron Beynon

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2021/03/13/two-poems-by-byron-beynon-2/

Cantata by Jeffrey Cyphers Wright

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2021/08/14/cantata-by-jeffrey-cyphers-wright/

Howard Beach: Queens, NY by Doug Holder

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2021/01/12/howard-beach-queens-ny-by-doug-holder/

Leave Meeting by Bruce E. Whitacre

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2021/01/12/leave-meeting-by-bruce-e-whitacre/

A Familiar Street, Unknown by Brian Rihlmann

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2021/05/13/a-familiar-street-unknown-by-brian-rihlmann/

When my dad created god by Jane-Rebecca Cannarella

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2021/09/11/when-my-dad-created-god-by-jane-rebecca-cannarella/

Two Poems by John Dorroh

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2021/07/14/two-poems-by-john-dorroh/

Wild by Paul Ilechko

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2021/04/11/wild-by-paul-ilechko/

Two Poems by Catherine Zickgraf

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2021/05/13/two-poems-by-catherine-zickgraf/

Two Poems by Mark Tulin

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2021/03/13/two-poems-by-mark-tulin/

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When my dad created god by Jane-Rebecca Cannarella

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When my dad created god

“I am Synergy. I am no more or no less.” – Synergy; Jem & the Holograms, 1985.

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When my dad created god

she was purple-haired in

a jumpsuit, leg warmers,

with the voice of my dead mother.

Her eyes obsidian like the volcanic glass they kept on a dresser

from their honeymoon a lifetime before she got sick.

Mothers have eyes everywhere and God is all-seeing.

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I’d only known of Mary as a mentor in the absence of light,

forced into maternity, a kid becoming a mom to all,

and when my dad abandoned us

my sisters and I were forced to find money to keep us together,

our struggles shielded from the eyes of the divine.

We moved our lips in prayers that our hearts didn’t hold.

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The day my younger sister found the god that dad created

our faces had dimmed:

sagging cheeks where apples had lived were the dirges

composed from a life once loud with music.

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God was revealed as a surrogate mother, ally, and mentor;

when she sings through me it’s the songs of my actual mom.

But her melodies are pointillism and pixelated.

When my dad created god he made her just close to comforting.

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But no one asked me if I wanted to be a holy host,

both a kid and a mother, so

God uses words from a man that I barely remember

to convince me to operate her, a technological miracle, a modern-day deity,

to save the souls of my family.

God tells me that my body was made for this,

to be moved through like a spirit,

insubstantially a proxy for a long-gone actual mom,

just like how she was made for this.

And she tells me that our union is, and will continue to be, synergy.

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Jane-Rebecca Cannarella (she/her) is a writer and editor living in Philadelphia. She is the editor of HOOT Review and Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit, and a former genre editor at Lunch Ticket. She’s the author of Better Bones and Marrow, both published by Thirty West Publishing House, The Guessing Game published by BA Press, and Thirst and Frost forthcoming from Vegetarian Alcoholic Press.

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