The Cartoon & Poem Supplement

"But he’s always been nice"

Poems:

“Mother” by Jim Moore: Takes multiple turns. First it’s observational/confessional, with a straightforward quality that tempers its brutality. Then it goes briefly where you expect it might, before twisting wildly in an entirely different direction. It seems to be about the gradual accumulation of memory, which “carries everything before it” like the river at the end, but maybe that’s too pat. The sudden appearance of a specific second-person audience ought to reshape everything; that it doesn’t feels less like an issue and more like the secret point.