Lisa Mottolo
Lisa Mottolo is a Poet, Editor, and Bird Whisperer living in Austin, TX. She is author of the poetry collection How to Monetize Despair, which was published by Unsolicited Press and included in Independent Book Review's "Best Books We Read This Year" list for 2023. She is the Founding Editor at Lit Fox Books and she has attended writing programs at UC Berkeley and Kenyon College. Her work has been published in Penn Review, The Laurel Review, Diagram, Santa Clara Review, Stonecoast Review, Louisiana Literature, and others.



Why Do Tombstones Look So Much Like Statues of Groundhogs                  


popping out to look for spring?
And why do I worry about the pain

of the dead when it is far more significant
how we suffer when alive?

It is probably for the same reason
that I pile photos gently,

so the photographed don’t suffocate
on the other memories.

My father said, “see if you can feel anything,”
as we drove past the tree-crowded ditch

where my mother died.
Night was the grey-black of an old rabbit

and my eyes struggled to see
through the stretched light of oncoming cars.

People like to say, “everything happens for a reason,”
but what if the reason is simply

“because the wind was bellowing”?
People like to say, “Look at the moon,”

when really there’s a burning white comet
slicing through black,

coming to strike me
with awe.


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