….
Chaos
…..
The roller coaster ride
began with my father’s death,
retirement and menopause
in the same year.
Clarity from hormonal shake-up
lead to divorce.
It was like the movie,
Shirley Valentine
in which a woman
travels to Greece,
leaves her husband behind
with stained kitchen counters
and thread-bare rugs.
I didn’t go to Greece
but I did leave a husband
and a house with kitchen stains.
I took the rugs.
…..
This poem is from the chapbook Put a Comma After Love by Norma Ketzis Bernstock (Finishing Line Press) and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/put-a-comma-after-love-by-norma-ketzis-bernstock/
In this, her third collection, Put a Comma After Love, Norma Ketzis Bernstock explores the thoughts, emotions and behaviors that sometimes fill the space after the comma, that place where husbands, wives, lovers and ex-lovers might pause, take a breath and contemplate their actions and the consequences that follow. Though breakups can be painful and disruptive, these poems are never maudlin but written with a sharp wit by a confident woman with a positive outlook.
After a 34-year career in education as a middle school teacher, supervisor and media specialist, Norma Ketzis Bernstock is now a full-time writer and artist. Her poetry has appeared in many print and online journals and anthologies including What But the Music, Poets of the Palisades, Voices From Here, Stillwater Review, Connecticut River Review, Exit 13, Paterson Literary Review and Rattle. Her poems have been featured online at Your Daily Poem, read on WJFF Catskill Radio and have received a Pushcart Prize nomination. An early chapbook, Don’t Write a Poem About Me After I’m Dead, was published by Big Table Publishing.
The Paddock Review 