Mirror Talk

Poet Barbara Alfaro is a recipient of the IndieReader Discovery Award for Best Memoir for Mirror Talk. Memories of her early New York theatre experiences include being a young actress so shy her “thoughts trembled” and cast in an off-Broadway experimental play where she was told by the director, “I am casting you against type, the character you play represents man’s inhumanity to man.”

As a middle-aged student completing her bachelor’s degree at Goddard College, she chooses classic fairytales as her senior study. “Surely, every prospective employer would like to chitchat with me about The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales by M. L. von Franz.”

Here’s one of Barbara’s poems from Mirror Talk.

‘BEFORE DARK’, from Mirror Talk

“Home before dark,” our mother’s voice

trails after my brother and me like a kite tail

as we scamper to stickball. Sundown

happens too soon so we run to the blue

house as if our lives depend on time.

After supper, in the hallway, I hear

“She’s got to stop following me around”

and imagine his pals poking fun at

a skinny kid sister tagging along.

Today, I can’t help it; I’m happy.

God knows why.

I’m holding on to heaven.

If I let go, what’s there? Nothing

but memory and pain.

I confess I’ve been unfaithful

to my dreams and my stories,

leaving them alone and unwritten

in the distant shimmering house,

the house they burst forward from,

rushing and true. I have to keep writing.

That’s how it is, before dark…