Storyteller of the Week

Donna Hilbert

 

Donna Hilbert at wedding with late husband.

 

Donna Hilbert was born in Grandfield, Oklahoma near the Oklahoma Texas border, but has spent most of her life in Southern California. She is a graduate of California State University, Long Beach, with a B.A. in Political Science, and from Phillips Graduate Institute, with an M.A. in Marriage and Family Therapy.

 Her books include Gravity: New & Selected Poems, Tebot Bach, 2018, The Congress of Luminous Bodies, Aortic Books, 2013, The Green Season, World Parade Books, 2009, Traveler in Paradise: New and Selected Poems, PEARL Editions, 2004; Transforming Matter, PEARL 2000; Feathers and Dust, Deep Red, and Mansions, all from Event Horizon Press.

 In 1994, she won the Staple First Edition writing award resulting in the publication in England of the short story collection, Women who Make Money and the Men Who Love Them. Her Greatest Hits chapbook, which includes her most anthologized poems from 1989-2000, was published by Pudding House.

 Her work is the subject of the short film Grief Becomes Me, by director Christine Fugate, which was shown as a work-in-progress at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference and is included in Grief Becomes Me: A Love Story, the documentary about her life and work. She writes and teaches private workshops in Long Beach, California, where she makes her home.

 

Comments by Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

 

I’ve been a fan of Donna Hilbert’s poetry for many years because she touched me emotionally with her powerful poignant poems and I wanted to write narrative poems that had that effect on readers. When I started writing poetry in 2006, there was no zoom. She lived in California and I lived in Arizona so I studied her poetry to learn how to write narrative poetry.

 When I met Donna in 2020 on Verse-Virtual, where she is a contributing editor, I shared with her how many publishers had rejected my poems saying I didn’t write “real” poetry because I didn’t write lyric poetry. Because I was a retired newspaper reporter, lyric poets told me I could never be a poet.

 Donna was enraged and said something I’ll never forget, “You are a stellar poet and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.” In fact, she told me my journalistic style was a plus in writing poetry. “Sharon Waller Knutson uses her journalist skills to get right down to business. Right away we know the who, what and where.” she commented on one of my poems. I want to thank Donna for her support and guidance by showcasing older poems of hers that I enjoyed. over the years.

 

3^rd Avenue North, Seattle

Look, Dear Heart, it’s me
in winter cap and coat,
dressed, for once, for weather,
posed in front of the old apartment
where we were always cold
and often hungry. Meager haunt
of sauce-less spaghetti,
of peanut-butter and day-old bread.
You were a student here, studying
into the night while I read novels
and felt abandoned and unloved.
Sundays, I bawled on the phone
to Mother and you called your dad
to talk sports, laugh about my cooking.
Here is where I lay on the sofa
aflame with fever, where a punk
intruder punched your front teeth loose.
Here is where we fought everyday,
made love every night.
Here is where we brought
our first two babies home.
Here is where we mapped
our sparkling future.
Here is where we couldn’t wait to flee.
Now, the babies are grown
and you, Dear Heart, are gone.
But, you would recognize this place,
it’s just as we left it—
the faded paint, the splintered door
opening to the asphalt lot. 

Appeared in Cultural Daily

This Gun is Real

I have seen my face in the black metal
felt the heat
breathed gray dust hanging
in the air.

This kid knows
what makes Saturday night special.

I open the flue
hide the gun in the chimney.

I am talking about terror.

Now I look for the knife.
this knife is real.
I have seen it at work
slicing the Sunday roast.

I slide the knife
into the shoe box
replace the lid.

Now it’s the middle of the night.
I am lying on the floor.
From the light under my door
two voices.

He says, “I’m taking the kid.”
She says, “I’ll do anything.”

Something black comes up from my stomach
covers me.
This child knows
how to die.

Sundays, he sleeps late.
We get up early.
I bring her the knife.

She starts dinner.

His favorite
pot roast sliced thin
pearly white onions
potatoes steamed in their pink jackets

leftovers all week.

-From Traveler in Paradise: New and Selected Poems

 

Aunt Lucy and Mother Surprise Me with a Visit

I dash frantic room to room
spread a bed, pick up toys,  
kick dog bones into corners.
Before I can change my rumpled shirt
or brush my hair, 
the dervishes rush the door. 
Mother straightens every painting

in her path. Aunt Lucy arranges
knick-knacks on the mantle.
Mother suggests I fold laundry
as I go. Lucy says to try
some Mop and Glo. They’d
love to put my house in order
if they just had time to loiter.
Outside, the dogs drag trash across
the lawn. Of course, they see this
through my smudgy kitchen window.
I plop a can of tuna in a bowl,
whack celery, onion, pickle
to a furious fine mince, finish
with a squirt of mustard,
glop of mayo, and rip open a bag
of chips and call it lunch.
They eat. They split a Coke.
Then, out they whirl
as quickly as they came.
On the porch, kisses, quick goodbyes.
Then Mother runs her thumb
hard down my spine,
her wordless gesture says it all:
straighten up, young lady, it’s past time.

​First published in Mas Tequila Review

 

Catching Her Dance

Mom looks straight at me
through too-big glasses,
hands a blur like birds in flight.
She’s Chattanooga Choo-Choo-ing 
throughout the house to get me  
off her back, prove she can still move, 
if she feels like moving.

I grew up watching her dance
across the slick linoleum 
of our kitchen floor 
to In the Mood and other tunes 
from her teens and World War II.

I try to catch her dance
on video, but my phone is new
and I don’t know much about 
the camera. What I am left with 
is this awkward still shot, 
snapped the moment she orders
put down that cell phone, Junie,
and watch me dance!
 
-Chiron Review, Spring 2015

 

Mrs. Pulver, Landlady

Let your knees be neighbors.
Mrs. Pulver’s mother never
taught her that, so, when she came
to get the rent, I couldn’t help
but see her panties
and the tops of her pull-up hose.
She liked to have a cup of tea
and tell me what I’d need
to know, now that I was grown,
about to have a baby of my own.

She’d repeat the story
of her terrible wreck,
gas-pedal stuck,
the zoom down the hill,
legs broken, pelvis crushed.
“If it happens to you, girl,
what will you do?”
Mrs. Pulver, whose pelvis
is pulverized
became a song in my brain:
duck and cover
kill the engine
don’t lose the baby
down the drain.

From Gravity New and Selected Poems