The JRB presents an excerpt from The Consulting Room by Dawn Garisch.
The Consulting Room
Dawn Garisch
Karavan Press, 2025
~~~
Ways to mourn
I have never mourned my mother.
You can live without a limb.
Most plants survive the winter.
A wind blows through my skin.
I was taught to fear the river,
my pockets filled with stones.
On the shelf, a single feather.
Brown bird, eat your crumb.
Kitchen dishes were her cover;
the hurt contracts the womb.
A fish hook for my father;
a splinter in my thumb.
But the wind is not the weather.
Water flows, the bird has flown.
I am not a paltry griever
and my mother’s not a tomb.
- Dawn Garisch is a medical doctor and award-winning author and poet. She’s had seven novels, two non-fiction works and a short story collection published. Four of her novels have been published in the UK, including Breaking Milk (Heloise Press, 2024)—also short-listed for the CNA Sunday Times award in SA (2021). Her short story collection What Remains (Karavan, 2023) won the NIHSS and the Nadine Gordimer SALA awards in 2024 in that category. The Consulting Room (Karavan Press, 2025) is her third collection of poetry.
