Storyteller of the Week

 Jacqueline Jules

  

 Jacqueline Jules and her son Neal

Jacqueline Jules is a former elementary school librarian who found herself intrigued by almost every book she put on the shelf. A voracious reader, she enjoys biography, memoir, science fiction, mystery, poetry, realistic fiction, historical fiction, nonfiction—any book for any age level as long as it offers a good story. Her writing reflects this eclectic taste. As an author, she doesn’t restrict herself to one genre or audience, either. She writes for both children and adults.  

Her first full-length poetry book, Manna in the Morning, a collection of biblically inspired poems, was released by Kelsay Books in 2021. In 2016, her chapbook, Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String won the Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press. Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String is dedicated to the memory of her son who died of cancer at the age of 31. These poems recount grief, anger, and the decision not to be absorbed by bitter circumstances. Her chapbook, Field Trip to the Museum (Finishing Line Press, 2014) is a group of narrative poems written in the voice of a teenage girl processing emotional turmoil with a therapist. Stronger Than Cleopatra (ELJ Publications, 2014) is Jacqueline’s poetic memoir of losing her husband of seventeen years very suddenly to a heart attack, and her journey to a new love and a new life.   

For younger readers, Jacqueline’s collection, Tag Your Dreams: Poems of Play and Persistence (Albert Whitman, 2020) consists of 30 illustrated poems which celebrate being active and reaching for goals. In August 2023, Bushel & Peck will release Smoke at the Pentagon, an illustrated collection of 18 narrative poems written in the voice of young people who experienced the September 11th terrorist attacks in Arlington, Virginia.

Jacqueline is the author of over fifty books for young readers on a wide variety of topics. Her poetry has appeared in over one hundred publications including One Art, Sunlight Press, Gyroscope, Imitation Fruit, and Your Daily Poem. 

Visit her online at www.jacquelinejules.com

Comments by Sharon Waller Knutson

I’ve been a fan of Jacqueline Jules well written wonderful poetry for many years. It wasn’t until we met at the end of May that I googled her and was impressed to find her on Wikipedia and learn of all of her accomplishments as a writer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Jules

I find that Jacqueline and I are also members of the same club none of us joined willingly: Mothers Who Lost Children. She lost her son Neal to cancer when he was 31. Like me, she gets through her pain by writing about her life experiences.

I am impressed with the elegance in which she embraces her tragedies and her eloquent creative ways of writing about her grief.  I am proud to publish these powerful heartbreaking poems from her book dedicated to her son, Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String.

Mitzi’s Obit

Reading the morning obits
I am stricken to see
Nelly Waldman, dead at age 86
survived by no one.
Husband and son already interred.
No pet poodles, like my Mitzi, mentioned.

Having never met Nelly Waldman,
my grief as I sip black tea
is inexplicable except for the fear
of one day sharing her 3 line departure,
printed on paper soon to be recycled.

From infancy, we are raised
to procreate, to measure our mark
by living blood left on this earth.

It is a sad thing to die childless
unless of course you are Mitzi,
my poodle of 15 years,
spayed in her youth to avoid
the unpleasantness of puppies.

Mitzi’s humane end was decided at the vet’s
just yesterday. No chemo or surgery
for cancer-ridden dogs. They are privileged
to drift off to sleep with a single injection.  

And when I write Mitzi’s obit
I will say she was survived
by framed portraits on my mantel—
cuddling on the couch
with a boy too weak to walk.

My Mitzi will always be remembered
as heroic, having been loved by a dying child,
while Nelly Waldman will remain like me,
the pitied mother of a dead one.
                        
 
 Squatter

Grief slipped in with the crowd carrying casseroles.

For weeks, I didn’t truly feel his presence,
being too busy with phone calls and cards.

But Grief was patient,
eating brownies in the basement
until family and friends disappeared.

The day he clumped up the stairs, I was
surprised to see him settle on the couch
in torn jeans and wild hair,
lift dusty shoes on my coffee table,
ask for a bag of chips,
put his palm out for the TV remote.

At first, I treated him as a guest,
hoping he wouldn’t stay too long
or eat too much.

But as the months passed and the couch sagged
under his growing weight, it became clear
Grief had no plans to leave.

An unavoidable burden
like sending off death certificates
to banks and insurance companies
kind enough to express condolences
before asking me to sign
yet another form.

                     
Ladies Lunch

In between bites,
I compliment the food,
the choice of restaurant
the color of Susan’s sweater.

Lila praises my haircut,
Susan nods,
and the conversation circles
an airport the size of Dulles
with news of recipes recently tried,
car repairs, and an organic market on K Street—
never once landing on condolences
expressed three months ago.

They hang in the air
like cleaning products,
a dirty job finished in a room
no longer polite to mention.

I take another bite of salad,
note its salty taste,
excuse myself to vomit,
while Lila asks Susan
if she’s noticed, too,
how my face seems thin
since the funeral.

                 
Two Elderly Aunts

With birthdays two days apart,
Evelyn and Eleanor were celebrated together
at the Hunt Valley Inn. Sunday morning
champagne brunch—silver trays of scrambled eggs,
fat French toast, cut fruit, croissants, pastries.

We raised fluted glasses to toast
the triumph of old age, two sisters
nearing the century mark, 95 and 99,
with the same thick white hair,
stylishly cut to frame shrunken features.

A second cousin, invited as an afterthought,
I was seated in the festive party room  
across from the eldest aunt, Evelyn,
two grandsons, and widowed daughter-in-law.

Was I the only one to notice?
How my presence beside my spouse
did little to balance Eleanor’s larger share
of the table with four married daughters
and ten grandchildren, three with babies
passed from lap to lap.

Was I the only one to wonder?
Why one sister buried a teenage daughter,
young husband, and middle-aged son
while the other remained grief-free
for sixty years of marriage?

The only one to see that Eleanor
was a tiny woman, too frail
to hug all she had, while Evelyn
was taller, with unclouded blue eyes
stretching mottled fingers
across a red tablecloth
to hold hands with what she had left.

                     
Avocado Secret

When the widow wrote
how her husband
once said she was like
a perfectly ripe avocado,
I wanted to rush right out
and buy one. Examine
its tough exterior,
creamy innards,
solid core.

Learn its secret.

At your bedside, I was
best described as a banana.
A fruit turning brown
and mushy too quickly.

Just like an avocado,
when sliced too late.

Except I had no pit
deep inside, stopping
the knife.