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Donna Prinzmetal

Donna Prinzmetal

Each Unkept Secret


Donna Prinzmetal is a poet and psychotherapist living in Portland, Oregon. She is the recipient of the 2020 Lois Cranston Prize from Calyx. Her first book, Snow White, When No One Was Looking, was published with CW Books in May of 2014. Each Unkept Secret, a finalist for the Concrete Wolf Albiso Award, is her second book.


Donna reading from Each Unkept Secret

also featuring Julene Tripp Weaver.


Each Unkept Secret: $18.99

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Poem from Each Unkept Secret

What It Was Like to Lose My Mother

I believe I have a kind of feverish hunger
not a light flutter, more like the squall
we had in April, sudden.

And no, I do not define myself as orphan,
more like a blue iris in a swamp
where frogs sing loud as trumpets.

In the hazy dusk of that first afternoon,
I became ferocious, loss
a foreign country I had visited
against my will.

I heard a growl that began low and guttural,
traveled faster and faster.
People were afraid to come near me.
I was afraid to let them.

Each Unkept Secret