Barbara Marie Minney
Barbara Marie Minney, a native of West Virginia and a seventh-generation Appalachian, is a transgender woman, award-winning poet, speaker, teaching artist, guest reader/editor, and quiet activist. Her poetry and essays have been widely published and translated into Spanish. Barbara is the author of four poetry collections: If There’s No Heaven (winner of the 2020 Poetry Is Life Book Award and an Akron Beacon Journal Best Northeast Ohio Book of 2020), the Poetic Memoir Chapbook Challenge (2021), Dance Naked With God (2023), and A Woman in Progress (winner of the 2024 American Fiction Award for Poetry Chapbook and an Eric Hoffer DaVinci Eye Award finalist). Barbara is a retired attorney and lives in Tallmadge, Ohio, with her wife of over 43 years and a menagerie of stuffed animals Follow Barbara online at https://www.barbaramarieminneypoetry.com.
Chasm of Silence
I’ve written about my father before.
He is like a specter,
appearing in the corners of my mind,
a dominant
and domineering force,
a question of conversation
with my counselors,
a shadow looming over
all that I do.
I see him in my face
in the mirror,
hear him in
the modulation of my voice
some of the things I say,
creeping into my mannerisms
like English ivy.
Some say he “fucked up my life,”
the germ of my dispiritedness and angst,
the anticipation of offing myself.
I’m not so sure.
I see him now,
eating his depression dessert
of coffee poured
over sugared saltines.
Hank’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”
wailing from the walls of daddy’s
square shaped courage.
His death left
an overwhelming stillness.
Across the chasm
of the silence
the echo of his voice,
how hard he worked
to help me along in life,
how much he loved me.
I just wish I had given more of that back.
