Wit, Snark, and Light in the Dark

By Deborah Smith Parker

A sharp eye and an ear for rhyme threads through a life of obstacles and losses, leading finally to gratitude and a joyous peace.

Deborah Smith Parker's father instilled in her a love of rhyme with a childhood filled with the rhythm of humorous verse. Her humor seasons every poem, even those larded with pain. Her memories of love and loss - long frozen - return to burden her with grief and dreams of death. She looks up in despair; ultimately it is with her stubborn optimism that she sees the stars and “heaven bowing down in awe” and weeps with gratitude.

Parker's Wit Snark is a collection of poems, vivid, personal, and authentic. Parker searches for her place among other poets, and settles on her own place, where her father “woke those gods who slept inside of me.”

Those gods sharpened both her observations and her tongue, and she discovers a tone and rhythm in often rhyming couplets both cynical and vulnerable. A side eye to Los Angelenos who dare to move away reverses to a deeper nostalgia and homesickness for the deep black soil and flowers after bitter winters.

I want to go home
and dig my bare feet and hands in deep black soil that grows corn and alfalfa in the humid sunshine near rich arrays of lilacs, wild violets, and swaths of Queen Anne's lace that only briefly bloom between the bitter winters.

Surviving love, growing old, and the darkness of loss takes a couple of dogs to catch what spills off the tables, while contemplating her mortality brings back the memory of starlight over a long forgotten graveyard.

With Billy Collins' light touch of whimsy and the bite of modern sarcasm, Deborah Parker's poems speak unflinchingly to hidden truths with a voice echoing resilience and ultimately, joy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Top Reads Publishing, LLC
• Release date: Jun 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781970107319

Book preview

Also by Deborah Smith Parker

Humanus Astrologicus

The Horse that Haunts My Heart

Copyright © 2022 by Deborah Smith Parker

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded of otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for insertion in a magazine, newspaper, broadcast, website, blog or other outlet.

First Edition

ISBN: 978-1-970107-02-9 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-970107-31-9 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022909722

Wit, Snark, and Light in the Dark is published by:

Top Reads Publishing, LLC

1035 E. Vista Way, Suite 205

Vista, CA 92084 USA

For information please direct emails to:

[e-mail]

Cover design, book layout and typography: Teri Rider & Associates

Author photo: Alex Slattery, https://wabisabifoto.com/

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

For Mary Steussy Shanahan, PhD., who dedicated her life to her love of literature, her students and her husband and family.

Contents

Foreword

Free Verse

Romantic Nonsense Deconstructed

First Magic

Stingy Little Gods

How I Got Lost from Where I Was Going

Rusty Chevrolet

Some Thoughts on Turning 65

Epigrams

Ancient Curse

It is Written

Discount Buying Fever

A Midwesterner’s Lament

Biostitute

They Let Caltrans Out Today

To My Friends Leaving California for Simpler Places

I Want to Go Home

What’s Wrong With These Pictures?

Cappuccino by the Sea

Drug Du Jour

Everybody was Surprised

We Women Will Take Charge From Here

Kill for Christ

Beacon

The Craftsman

Wake Up!

Armor

If You and I Were Angels

I Write

Lovely Death

Grief

The Question

Splendor

Mortal Remains

Strange Customs

A Season Short of Time

Magic

Legacy

The Serpent’s Embrace

First Sacred Fire

Where Two or More are Gathered

Beltane’s Embers

Star Catcher

Science Wasn’t There That Night

Star Pools

The Visit

Guardianship of the Light

I’d Like to Know

Wags

Low, Slow Fire

Qlippoth*

Heliotropism

It’s a Stretch with Beagles

Kitchen Helpers

Double-shot Ambience

Come on Down the Road

Prayer of a Communicant

The Canoe

Through Eyes About to Die

When I Am Old

The Temple

About the Author

Foreword

By Claudia Black, Ph.D.

I have been reading Deborah Parker’s poems for more than three decades. Each piece I read, regardless of form or subject matter, leaves me in awe of how she is able to speak both to the conscious and unconscious within us, helping to better see their connections. I marvel at how frequently Deborah’s work moves me into contemplative states, depths I hadn’t yet touched, releasing tears I hadn’t realized were there. Or so tickled that I laugh out loud.

I feel her writing speaks not just to the heart in us but the soul, coaxing out long forgotten or buried memories, some filled with delight, others spiked with pain. She draws out family dynamics and other relationships with both wit and struggle, driven by the push and pull needed for resolving these internal and very human conflicts. Life passages with their accompanying denial and insights leading to release are common themes. Her images are profound and her rhythms navigate us to new depth and clarity.

As an internationally recognized psychotherapist, author and speaker, my work is credited with contributing significantly to paving the way for others to incorporate an educational framework and therapeutic direction to identify and heal the impact of impaired family dynamics, childhood trauma, and internal conflicts. What I know and have witnessed is that well-crafted poetry and prose—especially evident in Deborah’s works—offer great healing to the wounded heart, seeding the growth of resilience. Such writing resonates with that part of the brain