In the Months of My Son’s Recovery: Poems
by Kate Daniels
(LSU, Southern Messenger Series, 2019, 116 pp. $ 19.95)
The poem “Molecules” anchors the latest collection by Kate Daniels, a volume whose subject of opioid abuse is approached through a mother’s intimate familiarity with human cravings:
Whether it’s true or not, that all our
molecules replace themselves each seven
years, his body seems halfway new again,
one year into sobriety. I keep my distance now
but recall his painful, ten-pound freight, the torpor
of late-term pregnancy. All those final weeks, I rested,
famished, calling for food I could spin into blood
and bones so he could thrive.