Category: Poetry

Both Wings Flappin’, Still Not Flyin’

by Jane Ellen Ibur

Jane Ellen Ibur’s poems don’t shy away from the messy necessities of living and dying. The tasks they describe often parallel the labors assigned to the underserved and unappreciated: cleaning, scrubbing, tending the sick, and bandaging the wounded— what Robert Hayden might call “love’s austere and lonely offices.” Accordingly, a cleansing spirit animates the best of these offerings, a realization that personal renewal is seldom achieved without firsthand knowledge of loss, grief, and the transcendent bliss of genuine connection. In this evocative narrative of kinship blooming over the borders of a divided city, Ibur performs painful, beautiful, necessary work.

-Jabari Asim, Author of A Taste of Honey