Header photograph © Mane Hovhannisyan.
Grace Q. Song is a Chinese-American writer from New York. Her poetry and fiction have been published or are forthcoming in Drunk Monkeys, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Rust & Moth, Passages North, PANK, and elsewhere. A high school senior, she enjoys listening to ABBA.
Motherworld is intense, dark and presents a picture of a woman, the mother, who seems degraded. She has nothing. She needs to live through her children and only through their love. Love can not be commanded or produced on demand. The father appears as aggressive. Is the tree a metaphor for the mother? Sunflowers do indeed turn from their own shadows, for they follow the light of the sun. This poem travels from image to image, building a picture that is sad and disturbing. Well done.