Molly Akin

Mothering is a social construct, and I am motherless

There is
no mother

a fresh
bell ring

perhaps
there was

never

“Mother”

now
absence
is definite

absence

an old
bell rung

Molly Akin is a writer and nonprofit library director based on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She has read in venues including the Emily Dickinson Museum, Wilder Words, Fine Arts Work Center, and Massachusetts Poetry Festival and New England Poetry Club.  Molly is a 2023 recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant and her writing has been supported by the Sundress Academy for the Arts and Fine Arts Work Center. A semi-finalist for the Black Lawrence Press St. Lawrence Book Prize, Molly’s work has been published or is forthcoming from Brevity, Identity Theory, Paraselene, and Tulip Tree. Her chapbook, Hospice, was the 2024 Finishing Line PressNew Women's Voices Prize in Poetry winner.