By Kendra Leonard
My father leaves to me Macbeth
and all concomitant Shakespeare;
fear of angry men and their power;
thin lips conveyed by genetics:
I can now recognize our kin by their mouths;
fear of the hand and the belt and the bicycle;
a lack of dancing with comfort;
but also
preposterous thrillers;
hand-drawn maps;
stories to fill a world.
My mother leaves to me a slap;
a reminder to remember her
chant of karuna, karuna;
advice turned funny anecdote
about cigarettes, drinking, and sex
too long to relate here;
violent hypocrisies
between words typed and
spoken;
Lord of the Rings;
and all concomitant Tolkien.
Their estates I shift daily, knowing or not:
I wear their rings on a restraining chain.
Kendra Preston Leonard is a poet, lyricist, and librettist whose work is inspired by history, language, and the mythopoeic. Her first chapbook, ‘Making Mythology,’ was published in 2020 by Louisiana Literature Press, and her novella in verse, ‘Protectress,’ was published in 2022 by Unsolicited Press. Follow her at @K_Leonard_PhD
[…] My poem “Estate” was published today by Sage Cigarettes. My parents died within 11 months of each other–my mother in October 2018 and my father in September 2019–and “Estate” is one of the poems I’ve written about their deaths. The others include the three poems that make up A Forest that is a Desert: “In the Stony Mountains,” “Shadow Reel to Last Breath,” “and Hospice;”* and the three poems of All of the Leaves: “My Mother is a Poem by Yeats,” “Concerning Hobbits,” and “Presentiment.” […]