Instructions for Having a Mother

Leave out the windows and the door,

draw a sharp square, make it impassable,

put a triangle roof on it, sprinkle dead

birds on the tiles and all over the ground,

draw clawed burnt trees around. The sun

is all black, it’s raining tar. Look, this is

my sweet home. Tell the teacher

it’s abandoned, impossible, scary

to enter because of a bad monster

living inside, hungry for me. Then, cry

if you can while waiting for her to call

the mother. Maybe she comes this time —

wait for her to bloom into the gloomy

corridor with pale stars in her eyes,

to pick you up, and your artwork will lie

in between you like a beast in the car.

Maybe she feeds you, hugs you, 

washes you even, sees the bruises

on your legs, feels so worried that

she swears she will leave you

never again, so together you go

to your home, but you wait outside eating

ice-cream while she is fighting

with the monster, then killing it.

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Özge Lena's poetry has appeared in many countries, including the USA, UK, Canada, Iceland, Singapore, Spain, Serbia, France, etc., in distinguished publications such as The London Magazine, Hunger Mountain, The International Times, Sky Island Journal, The Trumpeter, Cambridge Poetry, and The Madrid Review, along with many anthologies worldwide. Özge's work received nominations for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and was shortlisted for the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition and the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize in 2021, then for the Plough Poetry Prize in 2023, and for the Black Cat Poetry Press Nature Prize in 2024. Her ecopoem "Undertaker" will be featured in the forthcoming Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War Anthology (Scarlet Tanager Books, US), and her poem "Here is a New Heart For You" was featured in the storefront of Barnes & Noble in Dublin, California, for National Poetry Month 2024.