Happy Friday, everyone! It’s almost the weekend which means St. Patrick’s Day celebrations are upon us. What a better way to improve your holiday weekend than starting it off with some poetry? If you missed our last post, feel free to read it here! Continuing on the trend of “flashbacks,” today we bring more great poetry from a past issue of the Laughing Medusa.

As part of the celebration for our new online home this year, we’ve started featuring a selection of some of our favorite pieces from previous print issues of our magazine. Each piece has been selected by a member of our Editorial Council, who’ve been kind enough to tell us why they love it (and why they hope you will, too). If this week’s choice or any others leave you wanting more—and we hope they do—be sure to check out the full version of our latest issue, now available online under that “Our Current Issue” tab you’ll find above.

This week, the featured poem is A Mother to Her Daughter After the Election, by Madison Semarijan, and was chosen by the incredible Claire. Here is what she has to say about it:

My pick for our TBT this week is “A Mother to Her Daughter After the Election” by Madison Semarjian in our 2017 edition of the Medusa. I read this piece over so many times while I was abroad–it gave me hope for the future. My favorite line is “Daugher, do not be ashamed / of the color of your trunk or / the number of leaves / on your body fingers.” This piece is full of intense imagery yet I feel like I can hold it firmly in my hands.

Read on for the full poem:

A Mother to Her Daughter After the Election

My dear, these oak leaves
were not always torn at the edges.
This tree splintered in half
holds fifty branches stabbing
fifty holes in the sky.

Do not raise your knife.

These are the words
to a song your future will sing,

now go to sleep and let your dreams
hug the vultures warm and sweet.

Daughter, do not be ashamed
of the color of your trunk or
the number of leaves
on your bony fingers.

Look at the ceilings and books
and wrap your hair in the flags
they burn.

They bite our roots like roasted beets
and the pink stains their venom teeth.

Do not follow them to the moon
but wrap your arms around the split
tree and squeeze.

My darling, this is your tree. Seat
the vultures next to the doves
and watch how the vultures bleed.