about me

Needs: a Poem

A prompt from Odessa Grimm.

“I was not born to be quiet.”

I did not come into this world quietly.
My birth was not out of fairy tales
but horror stories of blood
and weakening hearts,
mothers who felt torn apart by my cries.
The shrieking of a baby
who would not be silenced.
Even in slumber, I begged for someone
to love me.
It was about love, about need.
I always needed.
It was something that seemed like greed
to those who did not understand,
but if I could vocalize those cries,
I could tell them
I was not born to be quiet.
I simply had needs
I could not put to words.
Needs for love and attention.
And now, as an adult,
I still cry out,
begging, at times,
for love and attention.

Isabelle Palerma

Unmoored: a Poem

A prompt from Maureen Thorson.

“Write your own poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.”

A date etched into my heart as though
carved into glass.
My eyes were stained with tears, and
I turned to a notebook,
searching for answers about
why God robbed the world of ordinary men
who did their best to love.
I bled ink onto the page as I struggled
for truth
the night no one remembered as
a young lost princess became unmoored.

Isabelle Palerma

Unlike You: a Poem

“Unlike you . . .” a prompt from Kay A.

In less than a month,
unlike you to care about the wreckage of the Titanic that is my heart.
I have witnessed you stampede on
and trample me barefoot.
Yet,
the teeth you bared is what
I have come to expect.

Family taught me
(for better or worse)
to murder with mercy.
When you were flashing your baby teeth,
sharpening like knives,
I was practicing my smiles
in polished glass.

Unlike you to offer condolences
or express empathy,
and yet, the past few days,
while Lazarus has been in the tomb,
a different side of you has been exposed.

Unlike you to show warmth,
still a reptilian cold underneath,
but the air is a bit milder now – less frost,
less chill.

Unlike you to offer benevolence and yet,
a crack of a smile,
a beginnings of generosity.

Is it possible you were murdered by my mercy?
Killed by my kindness?

Or did New Year’s resolutions just fall
a few days behind on this calendar?

I’m not one to gaze the gift horse
in the mouth,
but I do have my suspicions
when you were flashing those fangs,
honing them like knives,
and are now sweet as spun sugar.

Just call me Doubting Thomas
if your kindness only lasts as long as
Lazarus was in the tomb.

Isabelle Palerma

Healing: a Poem

I remember a photo I saw of a two-hundred-year-old
cherry blossom tree.
I imagine the events it must have borne witness to:
births, deaths, tsunamis, the rise and fall of empires,
but still its branches spread with pink and red blooms.
I wake up some mornings, an elegy for self
on my cracked lips, gazing upon my scars
and wondering why I’m still here.
But to some, I’m still blooming and they don’t see
the fractures I think define me.
Perhaps I still have some life in me.

If a tree can withstand two-hundred years
of storm and sun,
I, too, can live and love a little longer.

Isabelle Palerma

Update on Catching Dreams

Yesterday morning, I received an email with my edited manuscript. I was all prepared to dive into the edits and see how I could improve my writing before sending it back to the publisher for one more round of final edits.

Then, I read the email. The small press I had to decided to go with is shutting down as of January 1, 2025 and will not be publishing Catching Dreams.