Bio: Lindsay Soberano-Wilson’s debut full-length poetry collection, Hoods of Motherhood (Prolific Pulse Press LLC, May 2023) is a homage to women who had to learn to nurture themselves the way they nurture others. As the editor of Put It To Rest, a mental health magazine, she believes in writing poetry and essays to put personal stories to rest. Her hybrid poetry chapbook, Casa de mi Corazón (2021), explores how her sense of community, Jewish Canadian identity, and home was shaped by travel. Her poems have appeared in Fine Lines Literary Journal, Embrace of Dawn, Poetry 365, Fevers of the Mind, PoetryPause, Quills Erotic Canadian Poetry Magazine, Canadian Woman Studies Journal, Running with Scissors, Fresh Voices and Poetica Magazine. She holds a MA (English) and a BEd from the University of Toronto, and a BA (Creative Writing) from Concordia University. Find her on Medium,Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok. Lindsaysoberano.com
Like A Muse In A Cage inspired by Leonard Cohen (prev. published in Marlene in a Pub)
Like a muse in a cage
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
Like a ballerina teetering on a music box
like a skunk stuck in an hour
I have tried in my way to be free.
Like an aloof armadillo in an explosion
like a translucent paper nautilus exposed
I have tried in my way to be free.
But even when my heart spills
like black squid ink upon a page
my essence remains chained.
But you swore on that song
and all you had done wrong
that you would make it up to me.
You said that together we would be free.
But the world’s handprints are still on me.
Like Suzanne inspired by Leonard Cohen (previously published in Marlene in a Pub)
I always wanted to be like Suzanne
feeding men tea and oranges
by the river like a siren
or one of Cohen’s lovers
shacked up in Hydra
like the Paris ex-pats buzzing around
abstract words and images.
But then that would somehow mean
that I would also be in love
with a man who struggled to love
because he struggled to love himself.
But does that matter?
Does it matter
that he didn’t love in their way
in the right way
but in his way
and was it not better than no way.
Is it not
better to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all?
I still want to be Suzanne
free to love
how and whomever
she wants
because she’s tameless
and irresistible…
because
“you touched her perfect body
with your mind.”
When Purple Rain Is Falling As Dove’s Cry, Let’s Go Crazy In The Sky… inspired by Prince (previously published in Put It To Rest)
When purple rain
is falling, falling,
dropping, fast,
furious, and then
slowly
maybe even a bit
deliriously
from the open sky…
Letting it all out
just you,
the little old world,
and I.
That’s when we find
it’s okay to say
let’s go crazy
despite the tsunami
elevator we ride
up and down
side to side
but that doesn’t mean
we have to slide.
As Prince says:
“I’m not gonna let de-elevator
Bring us down
Oh, no let’s go.”
Blood Orange Heart inspired by Portishead (prev. published in iPoetry)
She’s so tired,
tired of being a temptress
tired of playing,
playing with the slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune
That pierced her pierced soul
draining her heart like the sweet juices
of a blood orange
in a serial killer’s hands
Until there’s nothing
but dried fruit
because her heart
is of no more use
just a fragmented fragment
of what it used to be
as she slips on an orange peel
before locking it in the glory box:
“Leaving it
to the other girls
to play.”
Oh, it didn’t have to be this way, she laments
as she eats the blood orange
by the light of the full moon in full bloom.
Soak Up the Sun inspired by Sheryl Crow (published in iPoetry)
It’s quiet today
but only because it was loud yesterday.
Will it be quiet tomorrow?
Or only until I hear a tune
looming to some familiar doom.
For how long will
the silence endures…
To will the sunshine to come
I’m gonna soak up the sun …
Fevers of the Mind 