To the Patron Saint of Wayward Daughters

Kelsay Books

Description

This is a journey, an every-woman compilation that intrepidly explores both geographical landscapes and those of the heart. These poems are travel notes and tribal longings where “latitudes and longitudes (are) well-worn highways.” It’s a tale about women on the edge— of oceans and summits, reaching for the equator, or “riding on the back of an older boy’s motorcycle.” At times, one may fall, mesmerized while chasing a feather or for an unlikely lover, and another will soar, mermaid-like, “above the clutch of soft corals, …the open-mouthed kisses of fish.” Foreign countries echo with the footsteps of mothers and daughters who stir this collection in currents. Like any worthwhile journey, there is grief, wonder, and respites for introspection, but the trek remains buoyant alongside those “who don’t tilt toward the light/ but ache for the horizon instead.”

Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia

@ Laura Sobbott Ross

You always had a gypsy heart.

I recognized at the edge of the Blue Ridge—

mountains that lay around us in repose

like muses long given up their siren songs,

a paunchy silhouette of hip and bosom,

an earth we could almost lean into.

—You Always Had a Gypsy Heart

Reviews

What Ross is doing here, it’s a cartography of womanhood, a chronicle of the feminine—water, blood, fear, longing—and it’s overwhelming. I feel like a voyeur, stirred by secrets I’ve overheard, my head buzzing and blooming, my heart cracked open like a pomegranate. What she shows us here is the long road from girl to woman to girl again, mothers’ and daughters’ journeys bouncing off each other like moonlight on the night sea. The girl on the cusp of womanhood, the woman in the eyes of the girl, the girl in the woman’s, the endless pull of moon and water, the ocean singing in our blood. I’m staggered by these poems.

—John Calvin Hughes, author of The Lost Gospel of Darnell Rabren

Laura Sobbott Ross’s sweeping and exultant book is both prayer and confession, an all-embracing utterance to a mythic, all-listening ear. These poems wrestle with the vagaries of life in a “praise song” of scintillating language and gasp- worthy images. In an odyssey across far-flung geography, yearning and memory, To the Patron Saint of Wayward Daughters is a poetic hero’s journey that startles, comforts and disquiets, but ultimately arrives as “small rainbowed forgivenesses” and an antidote for “the world and all its random cruelties.”

—Gianna Russo, Wordsmith of the City of Tampa and author of One House Down

In her latest offering, Laura Sobbott Ross gives us brilliant collection of poetry— To the Patron Saint of Wayward Daughters, that has the genuine feel of a culmination of lifelong journaling. Each page reflects on a past, brimming with tales of family and friendship, love and longing, marinating in both melancholy— my bones full of frolic despite the weight of your doctor’s prognosis, and celebration— I wanted to dance with you, Barcelona, your candles gone liquid, your blue twilight under lace. This is impactful, revealing verse— the soft belly of a well-lived life, detailing adventures that circle the globe. Laura holds nothing back. When you close this book, you’ll know her better.

—Jim Steele, author of Facets

St. Paul de Vence

@ Laura Sobbott Ross

France smells like linen & eau de civilized

Tuesday afternoons, shop girls in pomade

& rosewater. Parchment corners folded

to flag a certain lyric.

—Cote d’Azur

Sample Poems

Wine with Everything Was What I Said

when someone would ask me

for the color of my lipstick.

I loved the way it made me feel

like a mad queen issuing a proclamation—

Wine with Everything and enough

roasted squab for all the rowdy villagers;

a festival of plums & harlequin roses—

that color, I mean, the way it never bled

in betrayal across my teeth. Amative—

(disposed to love), the gist of a shade

too kitten heeled and pearly for me,

a shimmer lifted away by the wind

while riding on the back of an older boy’s

motorcycle when you were supposed to be

home babysitting your younger brother.

Mars Rising, a chroma too atmospheric

not to leave what looked like a trail of blood

across throats and earlobes, and let me just say

Desire Was a Blue-Eyed Man, silky & humid

a taste that really left me wanting

to be kissed down there by the river

before I learned Crush was a color

that meant avalanche, matte and opaque,

too heavy for a girl revved up on Revlon,

a girl too impractical to sustain

the momentum of anything but dancing,

who thought there was nothing more

hypnotic than moonlight darkening the hollows

of a man’s cheekbones. I tried them all—

by that I mean the lipstick shades, of course—

the orchids and the mochas and the corals,

the lacquered, the frosted, the ticklish feather coats

of glossy nudes, the amber-golds and apricots— all

imprints ghosting from goblets raised in the palette

cleansing light between him and him and him;

Wine with Everything clinging to the rim.

(first published in Kestrel and featured on Verse Daily)

Saint Moritz

@ Laura Sobbott Ross

…(we) opened lace curtains to the boxed reds

of geraniums, while we whispered of breasts

still latent on the flat horizon of our ribcages.

Breasts, that would rise radiant and disquieted

from our flesh the way wings do.

—Her Mother Walked Naked into the Room

Ode to Barcelona

I left you too soon, Barcelona,

your stone hillside of petulant angels,

your iron tatted balconies, your cinnamon

haze, your spires & cannons & crypts.

The sudden flame of bougainvillea,

mouthy and righteous. Everything: a dare.

A whim. A hemline whipping & brambled.

I wanted to dance with you, Barcelona,

your candles gone liquid, your blue

twilight under lace, your tavern wine,

your velvet skirts combed humid

with summer, your red mouth lit

with saffron & clove, that mesmerizing,

crooked eye tooth when you laugh.

I wanted to eat with you, Barcelona,

tapas & cava & mocha. Your city side,

a broken dragon husked and draped

to a whip blue sea. At the open window,

a sequin catching on a rim so fine it wails.

Truffle. Cuttlefish. Artichoke. Aubergine.

Bobal wicking purple on white linen.

I wanted to walk with you, Barcelona,

along your mosaic curbs of grouted confetti,

your spiral-shell walls of sea-whisper,

your Roman stanchions of blood & pig & sweat.

In your marketplaces, candy-bright produce,

beggars & pickpockets, splays of dawn

colored lilies razored against fortress walls.

And, I wanted to feel you, Barcelona,

your bedsheets, and your tambourine moon,

your flamenco tide rattling hulls & shutters,

your wolf & leather scented wind, your stars

sliding hot into grottos, the way the harbor

pivots, lights the column line of date palms,

and opens the soft, willing throats of doves.

(first published in Coldnoon)

Mount Pilatus

@ Laura Sobbott Ross

Was it like her to wander off the trail?

—Woman Falls to her Death While Chasing a Feather