“Object Permanence,” “Watching a Brood Hatch with my Mother,” and “World Books” by Dion O’Reilly appeared in Issue 32 and can be read here.
We’d love to hear more about your writing process in “Watching a Brood Hatch with my Mother.”
I enjoy the challenge of condensing a messy relationship into a 14-line sonnet. Of course, this is one little scene, but it demonstrates both the mother’s love for her animals and also her ruthlessness, two major components of her personality. The treatment of the chick in the poem sets up a metaphor for a mother who provides materially, but the strings attached are lethal. I loved the comparison of the to mothers in the poem, the hen and the human.o
What was the most difficult part of writing this poem?
The order was difficult. Originally the final lines were
and the baby lay on the gravel with little seamed eyes
that would never open. This was like our love, and I was happy for it.
So, that final line, radically revised, became the first line. I wanted to show the only way the mother can love is through animals. I struggled with the final lines. Trying to find a rhyme for the final couplet helped me. Not only did I find the off-rhyme, but I captured the mother’s voice and her ruthlessness, so…triple bonus.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
I like Rachel McKibbons’s Blud. It’s badass.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
I interviewed Diane Seuss for The Hive Poetry Collective; it was like talking to my long lost sister. We’re the same age, hung out in punk circles, and had wack childhoods. We both like to engage in uncomfortable truth telling. What I really love, though, about talking with her is how smart she is. She’s a real innovator., taking the sonnet to new heights. I’d love to see her get the Pulitzer for frank: sonnets.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
I have to admit, like a lot of people, I’m experiencing an unprecedented level of anxiety of late. COVID, climate change, fires, politics, hurricanes— it’s hard to feel peaceful. So, although I read, write, teach, and shop my next manuscript around, I mainly try to enjoy my life. So, dinners by candlelight, staring at the ocean, Motown music, that sort of thing.
Our thanks to Dion for taking the time to answer a few questions and share these poems. Read “Object Permanence,” “Watching a Brood Hatch with my Mother,” and “World Books” here: https://www.sequestrum.org/poetry-of-dion-oreilly.
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Dion O’Reilly has spent most of her life on a small farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Her debut book, Ghost Dogs, (Terrapin Books 2020) has been short listed for a number of prizes including the Catamaran Poetry Prize and The Eric Hoffer Award. Her work appears in American Journal of Poetry, Cincinnati Review, Narrative, The New Ohio Review, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, Rattle, The Sun, and other literary journals and anthologies.