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Amanda Roth

@helloamandaroth.bsky.social

561 followers 790 following 41 posts

🖊️ Poet, CNF Developmental Editor 🤍 Sci-fi, Folklore (Modern, Fairy tales, Food) 📍 Seattle

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Amanda Roth @helloamandaroth.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

That glorious and terrifying moment when the poet prints her manuscript...

A book manuscript is printed and taped page-by-page on two walls. Beneath them is a bed, a plant, and an air filter.

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Amanda Roth @helloamandaroth.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

I might be on a contrapuntal kick right now. Thank you to the kind editors at Hoxie Gorge for giving this piece such a good home! The whole issue is now live at HoxieGorgeReview.com

Labor, by Amanda Roth. A five column contrapuntal poem.

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Amanda Roth @helloamandaroth.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Sharing my published pieces from 2024! First up: The Bear published by @literarymama.bsky.social and inspired my childrens' obsession with the book We're Going on a Bear Hunt. literarymama.com/articles/dep...

The Bear
By Amanda Roth

“We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. Oh, no! We’ve got to go through it!”
- Michael Rosen

I cannot tell my kids that we are on a bear hunt.
I can only muster lies by omission:

It’s a beautiful day.
Don’t be scared.

I show them how to walk through walls of grass.
We laugh when it sticks to our hair, but at the river,

that deep,
cold river,

even they begin to see: the world
is not a safe place.

What kind of mother
brings her children to the river?

We are still wet when the forest
swallows us whole. Hand in hand
we stumble, trip, break
our knees open, wash our blood in the snow.

*

How do I keep them
safe? I don't know
the way under the dark, wet earth.
If I shake
the nails loose from my throat,
would it be enough
to build a bridge?

*

What kind of mother
brings her children to the bear? Shows them how
to reach into the dark mouth
of its cave, thick with rot
and scat and fear?

This is the world, I want
to say. The nose and fur and teeth of it.

This is how we hold
our hands out for the world.

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