Melissa LaDuc has been a high school English and French teacher for twenty-three years. She is a lover of trees, poetry and all things green. In 2015, she migrated from cul-de-sac, suburban living to small towns and open spaces. She now stewards a small swath of land where her husband has become a professional cowboy. Together they raise twin fifteen-year-old daughters and run Hope and Joy Farms in Woodbury, Tennessee.
Her poetry appears in the international magazine, Beyond Words. When she is not reading, writing, or teaching, she is dreaming of travel. She has a penchant for planting seeds with the help of her dog, Rémy.
Broken Stems
At eighteen, she had changed her name to Persephone and tattooed a blooming flower with a leafy stem just below her collarbone, above the location of her heart. It was the size of an apple or a pomegranate, which was slightly too big for the location on her slender frame, but she had done it anyway. Read more.
“Fossils,” “Equinox” and “a beautiful thing”
250 million years ago
an ancient cephalopod
once stretched upon granite
and Time remembers
a tail dragging in thirsty sand.
Meanwhile, She is getting away from us:
a child no one sees Read more.