Water Shedding by Beth Konkoski

Source: GBF Paperback, 26 pgs. I am an Amazon Affiliate Water Shedding by Beth Konkoski is a chapbook of stunning images that illustrate the shedding of an old self to make way for the emergence of another. In the opening poem, “Linger,” the narrator recalls how they needed to fit into a mold of another. “Burning any fringe/or edge you don’t like,/I beg to fit in your chosen/mold, to slide like a wedge/of orange between your teeth./” But the poem unravels this past to show readers that even as it hurts to break this mold, the narrator must relearn to use muscles that haven’t done much lifting.

From "Fragile, Do Not Drop" (pg. 2)

On a good day, I sense I'm breathing through glass
not shards cutting deep, just a dome of fine glass

I can almost press my hand to the edges,
but then fall, an insect captured beneath glass.

In each of these poems there is an energy that is contained, and while the narrator laments the lack of freedom to just be who they are, they also are afraid of what’s outside the safety of their carefully crafted world. But in “When I Was Eleven,” we see a brief moment of that freedom as the children head out into the night to catch fireflies or ride off on their bikes in summer. Later in “Sleep-Away Camp,” Konkoski explores the tight grip of fear with the story of Hansel and Gretel. She illustrates how fear is limiting, leaving the children without knowledge of the truffles in the forest or the beauty of the creek because the fear of the witch is ever prominent in their lives. “…we cage them with safety/and wonder when they do not flourish.” (pg. 6) Water Shedding by Beth Konkoski takes readers on a journey through motherhood, being a daughter and a wife. She discovers the beauty in the cages, while slowly breaking free from the fear that creates those confinements. Her poems evoke nature in a way that calls readers to take a breath in their own lives and really consider the beauty in it. We do not need to completely shed ourselves to be free, but we can bend like the river and flow like the water beneath the obstacles and around them. RATING: Quatrain About the Poet: Beth Konkoski is a writer and high school English teacher who lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and two children. She has published poetry, fiction, and non-fiction in more than fifty literary journals. Her first chapbook of poems, “Noticing the Splash,” was published in 2010 by BoneWorld Press.