Szymkowiak, Laurel

United States, (contemporary)

Prodigal’s Brother

  1. The kid’s dropped in
  2. from nowhere,
  3. still smelling
  4. like pig shit,
  5. and my father shouts,
  6. “See? He’s returned to us
  7. from the dead!
  8. Set a feast!”
  9. My father has forgotten
  10. his nights of weeping.
  11. I have not forgotten
  12. the sneers
  13. in the marketplace
  14. as I went about
  15. my father’s business
  16. while he withered to silence.
  17. Now I am to rejoice
  18. and understand.
  19. Tell me,
  20. what gives more joy?
  21. To have love
  22. and keep it?
  23. Or to lose love
  24. and have it return?

 Laurel Szymkowiak . Del Sol Review, #10, Summer 2003, “The New Writers” Issue. https://delsolreview.webdelsol.com/.

About the Poet:

Laurel Szymkowiak, United States, (contemporary), is a poet, operations manager and HIPAA privacy officer. She has taught upper elementary school, managed youth soccer, and worked as the operations manager and HIPAA privacy officer for a small corporation where she currently consults. She lives in Ligonier, Pennsylvania.

Her poems have been published in US 1 Poet, Voices from the Attic, Rune Literary Journal, Del Sol Review, Gyroscope, Perihelion, Loyalhanna Review and elsewhere.

She has been part of the Madwomen in the Attic writing community since 2012. The Madwomen in the Attic program has valued women’s work as writers, dreamers and architects of society, advocating for and empowering a diverse community of women by creating a space for writing, the open exchange of ideas, and the reading and publication of women’s literature. [DES-04/22]

 • Biographies here are short. Yet all the poets presented have fascinating lives. And they have created a bountiful trough of treasures beyond these works. Please root on about those you enjoy! I hope you find something informative, meaningful or that provokes your further contemplation.

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