Cleave in Two, by Justine Feron

Poetry, chapbook, 24 pages, from Bottlecap Features. There’s a Toni Morrison line, made no less powerful by the fact that it’s been quoted a million times by a million people in a million places: You are not the work you do; you are the person you are. And yet, the act of divorcing the two – of writing about life like work doesn’t exist, and not writing about work, lest you bore people to tears – bears little resemblance to how many of us actually live. For most people, life is a murky, maddening, and complicated combination of what we do for love and what we do for money. Cleave in Two is a series of scenes and reflections about the personal, the professional and the intersection of the two. In it, the author paints a portrait of a personal life rich with meaning and a professional life as a brand strategist in which she assesses and invents meaning for her corporate clients. At home, she falls in love, grieves, tries to make art, and devotes herself to her children. At work, her para