Sierra DeMulder

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Sierra DeMulder is an internationally-recognized poet, educator, and podcast host. She is a two-time National Poetry Slam champion, a five-time published author (The Bones Below, New Shoes, on a Dead Horse, We Slept Here, Today Means Amen, and Ephemera), and the co-host of Just Break Up, a globally popular advice podcast. In her freshman year of college, she discovered and fell in love with the spoken word. After plenty of spoken word performances, DeMulder shifted away from the slam poetry scene into the academic/publishing world. In an interview, DeMulder said, “I am honored by the image I have of people who read my poems and hold them. I so often think of those people, so many young women, who hold my books late at night.” In her most recent book, Ephemera, DeMulder touches on themes such as seasonality, nature, death, life, and the fragility of time. In all, the book is a movement from death to new life. Moreover, inspired by her experiences as a queer woman, mother, and survivor, her work often explores themes of womanhood, family, love, loss, and mental health. She regularly tours, performing at high schools, colleges, prisons, churches, and homeless shelters. Sierra lives in upstate New York with her wife and daughter.

A Thousand Pieces

My mother does not write in her diary,

too afraid someone will read it. Instead,

 

she writes on scrap paper, rips it up

into a thousand pieces, throws it away.

 

 

 

                                                         Once

 

my husband              slammed

 

            a thousand pieces

                                    the screen door

 

the house       thousand shook

 

   pieces   fell off           I shook—my children

 

            are the only        pieces        things

 

keeping      from killing falling

 

                           a thousand    into

 

pieces                                                 my daughter is

 

                        stubborn                like

                        the dishes

 

I can’t

                        broke        

                                    the  thousand

                                                pieces

                        

 

 

leave.

 

Published:

2015

Length:

Shorty

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2023

Themes:

Family

Love & Relationships

Literary Devices:

Caesura

a break between words within a metrical foot

Extended Metaphor

a metaphor that extends through several lines or even an entire poem

Repetition

a recurrence of the same word or phrase two or more times

Simile

a comparison between two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”