On the ground beside my mother’s bed, I lie. A human tripwire to keep her from running away or falling down in the middle of the night. I feel a foot at 3 a.m., nudging me to get out of the way. She says, I’m going out to the crab apple tree to stand among the apples and see what I can see. It isn’t the season for standing in apples, but still, she holds my arm with a sureness I must call hope, or the mixture of certainty and hope which once staggered ships across the globe, one candle to each, illuminating the vast nakedness between them, and this way proved the world was round.
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“Hope” from REVEILLE: by Liza Hudock
Published by Flood Editions on August 25, 2025
© 2025 by Liza Hudock
All rights reserved
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission
The poems in Liza Hudock's Reveille offer an unvarnished look at the tenacious ties that bind us to family, home, and to ways of talking.
"Here is a world in which the dead mother's angel arrives in the 'clean, bright mouths' of the dogs, in which 'mycelium adorns the roots like a lace glove.' Elegy or ode, personal history or menagerie—these pithy poems are as elegant and wise as they are whimsical. It's as if each line rides the razor-thin balance between inevitability and surprise. 'White wisp in the corner of my eye. / I try to look at it directly and it's gone.' I really love these poems. They make me feel more alive. Liza Hudock's Reveille is a standout debut."
—Sally Keith
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