This is Poetry Moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet and author Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and Professor Emerita of English and creative writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
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Welcome to Poetry Moment.
May is home to Mother’s Day. It is also Mental Health Awareness Month. Poet Jen Ashburn addresses both in today’s poem, “Our Mother Drove Barefoot.” She explains, “The poem came out of a trip my mother, brother, and I made from our home in southern Indiana [all the way] to our maternal grandparents' home in central New York.” It was during the car ride, that her mother suffered “a mental health crisis.” All the poet and her brother could do was wait, listen, and survive.
Jen Ashburn is the author of The Light on the Wall (Main Street Rag, 2016) and has work published in numerous venues, including The Fiddlehead, The Writer’s Almanac, New Ohio Review, and Mud Season Review. She is the recipient of the 2023 Lori White Non-Fiction Fellowship and has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes. She holds an MFA from Chatham University, and lives in Pittsburgh.
Sometimes moments from childhood stay with us throughout adulthood. This holds true for the events chronicled in “Our Mother Drove Barefoot.” Jen Ashburn comments, “The sensory details of that [family] trip, especially the sounds, are still vivid to me, 40 years later.”
In addition, the poet describes such specifics as a type of keening or lament, one that captures her anxiety but also conveys the extreme loneliness of her mother.
Here’s “Our Mother Drove Barefoot” by Jen Ashburn
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Our Mother Drove Barefoot
and pushed that Chevy hard
over the hills and through the night.
My brother and I slept like drunk bees
while she took us to the end
of our childhood. Hooked on Classics
played from a portable tape player
until the batteries died.
The last notes stretched thin—
the tuba sounding like an oboe,
the oboe like a cow giving birth
with her lips held shut. A lonely cry
in a hum of tires and interstate.
Such a long trip for her, driving.
Such a long, difficult labor.
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Jen Ashburn, from 'The Light on the Wall', Main Street Rag, 2016
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That was “Our Mother Drove Barefoot” by Jen Ashburn. Thanks for listening.
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Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You can more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
