Tufts University graduate Carla Schwartz is a poet, poetry filmmaker, photographer, and lyricist. Her new, full-length book, Mother, One More Thing is available through Turning Point Books and on amazon.com. She has performed and read her work in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Carla is also a professional writer with a doctoral degree. Learn more at carlapoet.com. Come celebrate the launch of Mother, One More Thing as the Arts at the Armory Cafe, 191 Highland Ave, Somerville, MA on Thursday, April 10, at 7 p.m. Bassist Marty Ballou will accompany her reading for the launch.  Hors d’oeuvres will be served. Cash bar.

Here is what Pushcart prize-winning poet Peter Campion has said of the collection: “In Carla Schwartz’s Mother, One More Thing, the details of the natural world, as well as the lives we make together as families, friends, and even individual daydreamers, come into radiant focus. Schwartz attends to her subjects with great sympathy, but she refuses to sentimentalize those subjects. Poems such as ‘Green Dress,’ ‘Last Glass of Orange Juice,’ and ‘Mother, One More Thing’ only strengthen their emotional force by exploring the subtle and often contradictory aspects of their occasions. Schwartz is an excellent poet, and her book is built to last.”

About Daily Call, the author writes, “This is a poem of address from the narrator to her diseased mother. It provides the reader with a humorous and insightful view a mother-daughter relationship, one that is ongoing, even when the mother dies.”

Carla Schwartz

Daily Call

You would be calling me out of the cold water today,
telling me to buy a new car, as you did fifteen years ago,
before I bought the Honda.

I would be telling you It only has 235 thousand,
and if I just replace the leaking fuel lines, it will last to 300, at least.

You would parry with side airbags and antilock brakes.
I still regret not having changed the timing gear in the Chevelle.

Just then you would lament,
upset that my face is cut, my eye, bruised, my legs, my palm,
and introduce me, “This is my daughter, she fell off her bike.”

The subtext reads, She doesn’t usually look like this,
I’m embarrassed, forgive her.
Not buying into the healing powers of a cold pond,
you would insist I will get sick.

I can’t call to say I won’t let go of the Honda
because you helped me buy it
and you’re not here anymore,
you, star of the showroom,
who knew how to say “no,”
to walk away from what you didn’t want.

From Mother, One More Thing, by Carla Schwartz, Turning Point Books, 2014.