Self-Centered, by Mona Mehas

Poetry, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Self-Centered is poetry in the center of the page and it’s mostly about me. If it isn’t about me the writing speaks to things I care about. The majority of poetry books are either left justified or, less common, a combination of left and center. I had a discussion about this with a couple people and wondered how it would look with everything centered. When I put the chapbook together, I was surprised how much I love the look.

In Self-Centered I include poems in several different forms as well as free verse. Two of the poems are shaped like what I’m writing about. The forms include viator, rictameter, nonett, etheree, palindrome, and others. The first poem in the book, "My Face is a Force of Nature" is meant to resemble a face with the placement of words and lines for facial features. In "Atmospheric River" the poem winds in the center of the page the way a river might.

Mona Mehas (she/her) writes poetry and prose from the perspective of a retired disabled teacher in Indiana USA. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in Paddler Press Trip Log, IHRAM Literary magazine, and many others. Her poetry chapbooks, Questions I Didn’t Know I’d Asked and Hand-Me-Downs are available on Amazon. Two of Mona’s poems received first place honors in the 2023 Poetry Society of Indiana Fall contest. Mona is Editor-in-Chief of Cicada Song Press and 2nd VP for Poetry Society of Indiana. She is working on a novel in verse.