Diabetic Gumdrops: Poems
by Ephraim Scott Sommers
24 Poems ~ 88 pages
Price: $15.00 (+ shipping)
Publisher: Main Street Rag Enterprises LLC
ISBN: 979-8-951438-02-7
To Order: mainstreetragbookstore.com
ABOUT THE BOOK:
I speak from personal experience about diabetes. In 1999, my 20-year-old son was diagnosed as a Type I diabetic. Youth typically notice symptoms much earlier in life. Diabetic Gumdrops, by Ephraim Scott Sommers, led me to revisit those experiences with humor and clarity. This collection of odes (another term for praises), belongs on the bookshelf of the millions of families who enjoy life’s gumdrops that fall from the package.
–Michael Escoubas, Editor of Quill and Parchment and diabetic dad
ADVANCE PRAISE:
I’m completely jealous of the odes that make Diabetic Gumdrops such a passionate and profound book of poems on love, loss, and physical well-being. This is no surprise as I’ve always loved Ephraim Scott Sommers’s work and his ability to write that which has as much conviction as it is convicting, “Again, you have thrown too much of yourself/toward the algorithm of wanting to be adored.” These are pages through which a soul speaks life.
–Jericho Brown, author of The Tradition, (2019)
Ephraim Scott Sommers is a real poet who transforms tragedy into song. This is an amazing gift of speaking in tongues: when the poet says sugar and means it “morphs into shards in my veins,” when a hand holds “a whole rotisserie chicken like a winter mitten,” when he sees himself as “the sunken piano of me smashing through your ceiling.” Charged with the voltage of Whitman-like incantation, this is a memorable book.
–Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic, (2019)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ephraim Scott Sommers is a singer songwriter, poet, essayist, and the author/composer of two books (The Night We Set the Dead Kid on Fire and Someone You Love Is Still Alive), as well as two albums (Pine Mountain Dirt and Stones & Smoke). Ephraim tours regionally throughout the southeastern region and calls Rock Hill, South Carolina his home. For more words and music, please visit: https://ephraimscottsommers.com.
FROM THE BOOK:
Ode to Spouses of Diabetics
by Ephraim Scott Sommers
and how they find us
in the darkened kitchen
at 3:16AM
in our underwear shirtless
spotlit by the light
of the open fridge
our right hand wearing
a whole rotisserie chicken
like a winter mitten
like an edible oven glove
a scattering of exposed bones
across the linoleum all around us
like the leftovers of already been hatched insects
a few cracked walnut shells
like oversized birdseed
and two opened rectangles
of naked white cheese
are waiting to be bitten into
on the white windowsill
while a squirt of mustard
on the microwave’s see-through face
dribbles down in slow-motion
and we Diabetics are half drunk
not on booze
but on two dizzy
and opposite truths
the brief half-open window
where treating low blood sugar means
eating whatever savior we want
in the name of survival
and what a joy to abandon the nuisance
of nutritional charts
to wherever they tumble
out of existence
because we have returned to the heaven
of unencumbered eating
and always our lovers watching
by the backstage door
like rock band managers
one eye on their lover on stage
one eye on their lover’s glucose monitor
themselves in their own polite dance
between when to let us paddle further
into the pantry
and when to throw us the grappling hook
to pull us out of the deep deep dark
so we must repeat the refrain
so holy so so holy
are our lovers
who keep chaperoning us through
this delicate dodging of our own deaths
because what brief windows
between deadly tidal waves
all of us together as couples must rediscover
the muscles to open up wider and to laugh inside
and to laugh outside too
for what has been dangerous
on this tiny night
in this little minute
will now be survived
so back to this brief delight
of us Diabetics at 3:17AM
beside the cool cherry pool
of a gallon of Greek yogurt
or a whole cherry pie
or a half a tray of cold lasagna
on the counter
and all the waters
tasty and calm and wide open
and all of us about to shallow-wade
no handed
and with our whole faces
as if snorkeling
and without thinking finally (thank you)
right into every single one
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