Storyteller of the Week

Margaret Coombs aka Peggy Turnbull

 

 

 Margaret Coombs in 1982 in Berkley WV

Margaret Coombs has published numerous poems in journals that include Sad Girls Blog, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Silver Birch Review, Contemporary Haibun Today, Amethyst Review, Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, and Bramble.

She is a contributing poet to Mad Swirl magazine and is an editorial assistant at The Solitary Plover.

She has published one chapbook under the name Peggy Turnbull titled, The Joy of Their Holiness (Kelsey Press).

Peggy changed her writing name to Margaret Coombs, which is her birth name, to honor her younger self, a woman who wrote daily and hoped to share her work with others but thought it an impossible dream. It took her decades of false starts and discarded drafts before she found her way into poetry and publication.

She attributes her leap forward to Dr. Jessica Van Slooten, an English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Manitowoc, who scheduled poetry readings in the library. They inspired Peggy to "dwell in Possibility" and she entered into "a fairer House", with much gratitude.

She published a new chapbook under Margaret Coombs: Where Sweetness Falls With the Rain (Cyberwit, 2024). The prevailing theme is place, told through persona, elegy, nature, and history.

 By profession, she was a librarian. Her first professional job required her to drive a delivery truck over the West Virginia mountains to provide library resources and services to graduate students in their home counties.

 After retiring from the University of Wisconsin-Manitowoc, she and her husband Bob stayed in Manitowoc, her birthplace.  

 

Comments by Editor Sharon Waller Knutson  

Long before I met Margaret Coombs in 2020 on Verse-Virtual when she was writing under the name Peggy Turnbull, I was hooked on her poetry about independent women and Mexico where I lived in the seventies.

I felt an instant connection and as we became friends and supporters of each other’s poetry.  I also learned we had a Montana connection. We both had grandfathers in Montana, where I was raised.

We exchanged books and she wrote a blurb for my book, Survivors, Saints and Sinners and an Amazon review for my book, What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Tell You.

I am proud to publish some of my favorite poems of hers. 

 

The Adobe Wall

 The manager of the cheap and clean

hotel where the cabbie dropped me

offers me a windowless room.

One of its adobe walls stops short

of the ceiling, leaving a gap large enough

for a human head. No one is there,

he says. Not now. I undress

in the bathroom just in case, then lie back

in bed with my paperback dictionary,

conjugating verbs. 

 

A light flicks on and two men

enter next door. I stiffen 

 

and listen to their conversation,

these strangers sharing air with me.

Until one of the men tells the other

he feels nervous that la norteamericana

next door might hear his bathroom noises.

I almost laugh. Then do what anyone

would do. Turn off the bedside lamp

and pretend to be asleep or not there at all.

 

 Soon after they turn off their light.

Their snores fill the gap. I relax on my back

in the earthen room, a room that smells

of spring dampness, the earthiness

of the mud and clay bricks that surround me.

I am as happy as I’ve been in months.

I am safe as any man might be.

As safe as a woman alone could hope to be,

next to two sleeping men,

two late arriving men

who must share a bed with each other

and a wall with me.

                       

Border Crossing

 I stand alone, holding my credentials

at the congested crossing, the last one to board

the second-class bus going from Nuevo Laredo

 

 to Monterrey. A stranger offers me the unfiltered

Delicado he taps from a fresh pack.

Bits of tobacco roll onto my lips. My throat burns.

 

Uniformed officials squeeze sideways down the aisle,

hips large with holstered guns. They point out

la señora to each other. She sits behind us, enthroned

 

among small boxes, agreeably peeling pesos

off a thick roll. The men return for another

and another handout. Finally, the bus lurches.

 

We bump past stretches of sand, a green haze

of sotol, spires of yucca. A long screech of brakes.

Young men in soldier green hold automatic weapons

 

diagonally across their bodies, block the highway.

The driver leaves to greet them, sends one to la señora,

who hands over her wad and implores the rest of us

 

to contribute. In churchlike silence we pass small bills

to him. Later, in fancy script, my seatmate writes

his address on an envelope in case I ever need help,

 

but I’m traveling west and lose it.

                       

THE PRETTIEST CITY IN MEXICO

In Guanajuato, my room faces a mountain
of Jacaranda blooms. Pink, yellow, and blue 

stucco homes lean into their neighbors’ lives. 
Nearby, a man and a woman sit outside 

at a wrought iron table. They sip coffee, 
share bread. A child runs toward them for hugs. 

In the evening, Guanajuato’s plazas surge 
with adults who carry small children in their arms. 

Parents kiss pudgy cheeks in a twinkling game.
One more observation for me to jot down, 

alongside descriptions of the sunny March weather, 
the dazzle of geraniums in window boxes,   

the bright Talavera pots in line on cement balconies, 
the taste of mango, pineapple, and papaya at breakfast. 

I count how many years I wasted, expecting 
Happiness to be impossibly aloof. She’s here, 

flourishing among us, free as the sun, 
and as big. 

 

A Morning in Mexico

I walk in the shadow of a colonial
cathedral. Children in plaid and navy

uniforms hurry to school. Their mothers
in cardigans and flip flops snap their gum

and ignore me as they would the annual
two-headed calf display at the fair. The traffic

spews noxious fumes. Norteño ballads
and polkas drift from side street shops, amidst

the sounds of a city grinding to its purpose:
metal shutters clattering open, engines

gunning, the bright taps of horns, bald tires
squealing. I drift past a tiled fountain

in the city center, feeling as ready for the day
as the fluttering edge of the nieve vendor’s

blue umbrella. A crush of tardy, laughing
schoolchildren rushes forward. A pang

tears at me in the way a hawk tears
at a small bird. Will I ever have a child?

 

Prayer for Getting Out

he almost murders her
but doesn’t
bless him

his grip around her neck
slackens, she escapes
bless her

she flees 
to the nearest flea-bag motel   
falls to her knees 

calls your many names 
o mighty, magnificent 
creator-who-is-not-finished-with-her-yet

weaves a prayer
flings it to you
hopes

passes an ungodly night
in the chintzy place
where prostitutes knock
men bark 
and glass breaks for hours

the next day
brings pebbles of pain 
where his fingers   
pressed her neck
her voice stays small

o one-who-sees-all 
who-loves-the-shattered-and-suffering 
keep hold 

for he will find her 

"The Adobe Wall," "Border Crossing," and "Prayer for Getting Out," were all published first in Verse-Virtual. "The Prettiest City in Mexico" was published first in MockingHeart Review.