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Literature, PoetryMay 27, 2016

Life Just Swallows You Up

Cover image courtesy of Southword Editions

Cover image courtesy of Southword Editions.

Father dies during the appetizers. Mother
keeps on eating. How’s work? she says. I
pour more wine. She passes
just before dessert arrives. Shame,
says the waiter, poised to whisk
away her Eton Mess. Leave it, I say
and sit there, orphaned, staring at both puddings,
wondering how I am ever going
to lift my spoon again.

Tania Hershman is the author of a poetry chapbook, ‘Nothing Here Is Wild, Everything Is Open’ (Southword, 2016), and two short story collections: ‘My Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions’ (Tangent Books, 2012), and ‘The White Road and Other Stories’ (Salt, 2008). Her debut poetry collection and a third short story collection will be published in 2017. Tania is curator of ShortStops, celebrating short story activity across the UK & Ireland, and is working on a hybrid prose/poetry book inspired by particle physics for her PhD in Creative Writing.

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