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LETTERS WITH TALONED CLAWS

The poems in “Letters with Taloned Claws” do not fit into the usual cast of a poetry chapbook – on one hand, it is a collection of verses with a recurring theme; on the other, the themes-within-the-theme create a chiaroscuro of overflowing and overlapping emotions. Yes, these poems are dark, somewhat, but only as a tunnel leading into light - they are not poems of sorrow, and not even of hope, but something in between. These are feelings that we have all endured, perhaps, penned by one who has been constrained to live what is unliveable, bear what is unbearable to many amongst us.

An American of Irish origin, Eileen Malone endured the pains and tribulations of motherhood of a different kind - one restricted by the damaged life of a grown son. Her life as a mother with a schizophrenic child forms the theme for a chapbook that is interspersed with sorrow, hope, hopelessness and understanding. The oft repeated questions of "Why me?" and "What have I done?" are touched upon, wept upon, and then discarded, as she turns her focus once again to the "Hows" and "How Nots". Even as she writes "don't worry/ so much about what happens to him after you're gone / Schizophrenics don't live that long" (This is What They Tell Me) she goes on to say:

We turn from each other

hold hands, take a step forward

and the world is made flat

once again.

(From “Homecoming”)

However, the anguish of restlessness is overbearing, and the reader cannot help but identify with her impotence as she writes :

“Come and get him,” the doctor rasped into the phone

“He’s only wasting our time and your money”

They said it was a waste

And that was the only thing

They ever recognized for what it was

- the waste.

(From “The Waste”)

Malone’s attempts to understand the affliction and the afflicted ooze through every turn of phrase, even as the helplessness gives way to a tacit acceptance of what is, and what must be. And while hope for her son dwindles, the love only multiplies, yielding verses as:

 I receive your beautifully blighted, misshapen spots

tenderly connected within the moment’s particular flesh

in an achingly sensitive basket of appreciation

(From “As a Trobriand Islander Harvests Yams)

 And that is how it remains, the sorrows melting and moulding to endurance, bowing, in celebration of survival.

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About Eileen Malone:

Eileen Malone lives in the coastal fog of the necropolis of Colma where San Francisco buries its dead. Her poetry has been published in over 300 literary journals and anthologies, a significant number of which have earned prestigious prizes and awards.

Letters with Taloned Claws was a Finalist in the James Hearst Poetry Prize and was published in the North American Review. 

The chapbook features several other award winning poems including Fractured, which won Second Prize in the Billee Murray Denny Contest, and You Talk at Me which won Third Prize in the Chatfield World Poetry Contest.