Posted by:
Elder Berry
(
)
Date: July 10, 2021 09:24PM
Posting on RfM for years and seeing a poster named "kathleen" responding with the best one liners and responses, I came to respect her years and years ago. Now I have had the privilege of being a conspirator in a collision of word crimes in creating a short book of poems and short stories.
It seems like a great RfM moment in a long series of great moments coming from my time contributing here. And I am proud to announce our book has been published by kathleen. Here is the link.
https://books.apple.com/us/book/breath-of-ezra/id1575825869What a ride it has been. I've always loved reading and writing poetry but I've let years pass without "an attempt" with those being spotty. My work never seemed good enough to even keep. Many of my poems have been filed in the circular receptacle filing cabinet, But Kathleen gave me a reason to write during this Covid time. It was like a shot of creative juice, a drug of sorts to feel like I had something to write for - an eventual book we would publish. And we did!
But what benefits from these "attempts" at poetry. My father died in the midst of these efforts and I was able to process my grief through writing a poem about him and including his poem in this book as well - without his permission. It felt vindicating. My feelings for him are raw and don't evoke love or sadness but a feeling of gratitude for something he had that my mother lacks - kindness.
Also, there is a poem in this work directly related to my post Mormonism - "Mormon Body No More" which deals with my feelings of separation with the church at a visceral level. Most of us exmos who had the honorific horror of going through the temple know what it is like toe be violated bodily in the name of deity. Fitting for me that I could write a poem literarily(probably not a word) separating myself from the church.
And Kathleen, her Short Story contest winning entry is in this book, is the title of a poem I wrote to accompany this work, as well as the title of the song my exmo brother composed from my poem (link to the mp3 in the book.)
What a heart-wrenching and tear jerking short story. My brother even told me he struggled with the composition but we all, him, Kathleen, and I love the result. And you can read it here on RfM if you don't want to read the published version (which is slightly different.)
It is a story involving one of the many stupid and foolish "doctrines" of Mormonism - that a baby can't be sealed, blessed with eternal life in being cataloged with the Mormon dead unless they take one, only one minute baby's breath. Like most Mormon stuff it is all about heated air and in it's highest quorums hotter, older, and blustering about eternal nothing. I'm thinking Jefferey's jowls jiggling with anger from "The Lord" at misbehaving and mistakenly believing "lazy learners."
So, thank you RfM for existing and Kathleen and I own the existence of our efforts to you. I dedicated the book to my kids (each one has a poem in it and since I am with them right now they had fun finding their own) but I would add here an additional dedication to Eric, Concrete Zipper, Susan I/S, Tevia and the many others who have worked on this effort of helping Mormons and former Mormons and potential Mormons in their recovery from Mormonism. Thank you.
Robert Hodson
P. S. This is a CZ approved post.