I recently discovered, and subscribed to, an online poetry journal called Bluepepper. Their motto is "Poetry with bite."

On my most recent round of poetry submissions, I sent a few poems there -- part of the "mother poems" series I shared here as I wrote one each week during the first year of Drew's life. They're now part of the next manuscript I hope to see in print, which has the working title Waiting to Unfold.

To my delight, the editor liked the poems I submitted, and published two of them today: New Poetry by Rachel Barenblat. He chose to publish "Fever" and "Comforter."

"Comforter" was written around the time of Shabbat Nachamu -- the Shabbat after Tisha b'Av (our central day of communal mourning), when traditionally we read the haftarah (reading from the Prophets -- in this case, Isaiah) which begins nachamu, nachamu ami (or, in the English familiar to many us thanks to Handel, "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people.") That poem is filled with references to the Isaiah reading, even as it's also about the experience of struggling with multiple night-wakings in the aftermath of a two-week trip.

And "Fever" arose out of the experience of Drew's first summer virus; the opening lines of that poem reference a midrash about Moses, which you can find on this Daughter of Pharaoh: Midrash and Aggadah page, in the section titled "The daughter of Pharaoh raises Moses."

Anyway: thanks, Justin, for publishing my poems!