We Are Chimera

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Laura Sobbott Ross has worked as a teacher and a writing coach for Lake County Schools in Central Florida and was named Lake County’s inaugural poet laureate. Her poems have been featured on Verse Daily and have appeared in Meridian, 32 Poems, Blackbird, Florida Review, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Art & Letters Poetry Prize and won the Southern Humanities Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. She is the author of six poetry books.

"...women carry at least three unique cell populations in their bodies— their own, their mother's, and their child's— creating what biologists term a microchimera..."
     —Katharine Rowland

We Are Chimera is a journey that threads mother to daughter to daughter. Beyond the elemental confines of cells and marrow, the “sticky web of …veins,” a daughter struggles, and a mother grieves. It is a place where “peonies un-mirth in pink and collapse,” where turtles become an unlikely spirit animal, and ultrasounds are read like tealeaves. As the daughter falters and drifts “like a kite, a satellite, a comet, fevered and orbiting,” the mother doesn’t let go. A baby girl arrives to amaryllis blooms and the winter solstice moon. Her “first breath, an altar” where culture, race, and hope tenderly merge.

Paperback: 52 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books (June 24, 2025)