Her Face In The Mirror:
Jewish Women on Mothers and Daughters

Editor: Fay Moscowitz
Publisher: Beacon Press

Relationships between mothers and daughters are exceptionally complex for all women. An uneasy balance between the fear of letting go and the desire for independence, the love shared between mothers and daughters can be volatile, tender, and exasperating.

Her Face in the Mirror explores this most difficult and affirming relationship in the lives of Jewish women through poems, stories, and personal essays.

"A powerful collection of writing, poetry, and essays written by Jewish women about the relationship between mothers and daughters. Includes pieces by Lila Zeiger, Vivian Gornick, Jodi Daynard, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, and Grace Paley."*

* Copyright 1995-2002 Muze Inc. For personal non-commercial use only. All rights reserved.

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Our Wounded
    for Gina

- by Shirley Latessa -

Wearing their loss
like makeup
or hiding it in a locket

next to a tattoo
limbs made of twigs
bodies tree-houses

they can't climb into
my daughter's friends stumble
through our home

They don't say why
they shrug off
the on-going sales pitch

and look for fun
crazy stunts
a way to stall

the death years
bearing down
like a ten-ton truck

delivering unwanted changes
Perhaps they fear losing touch
with that half-sensed heart-space

where blood swirls into a vortex
before it is veined
madly out again

where a new thought
sense-free can arise
or an image not found on TV

not found in the violence
Hollywood cradles them in
Like walking willows

they droop through my kitchen
saying who they are
Hi, mom, they say

and unfurl into
my daughter's room
skirting the piles of t-shirts

wild mushrooms
blooming on the floor
safe for a bit

in an electronic forest
of hard music
some with shaved heads

some with hair like a
madonna-blue annunciation
and each, each, each

with wounded eyes.

"Her Face in the Mirror" is available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com and at your local bookstore.