Meet Cheryl Boyer
Cheryl Boyer is a writer and novice shutterbug whose work has appeared in a handful of journals, including Kakalak, The Main Street Rag, and moonShine review. She is also the author of Counting Colors: a journey through infertility.
She lives in a small town in North Carolina with her husband and two children, is a home-schooling momma, and a sometime foster mom. Though not a coffee drinker, Cheryl finds it essential to eat a bit of dark chocolate every day.
You can read more about Cheryl at her blog here: www.myferriswheel.com.
A Sample of Cheryl’s Writing
Elizabeth
(My Father’s Mother)
by
Cheryl Boyer
Separated from me by
a generation,
a culture,
distance,
my grandmother
never scrubbed her pots and pans
until they shone
but cleaned them
with efficiency,
moved on to the next thing to be done
Her Kitchenaid, Imperial Gray,
(the color I insisted on when I bought mine)
mixed chocolate,
fudge,
batter
for sheet
after sheet
of cookies for market
I hear her hum this morning
in my memory
this stranger
who was flesh and blood,
her voice etched
by decade
after decade of use
What would she think
of my dark-eyed daughter,
not born of me,
who hums her way through each day
like the great-grandmother
she will never know
What Cheryl says about WordPlay
“Over a decade ago, in the midst of the grief infertility brings, I took a leap and finally signed up for a writing class. That class became part therapy, part fulfillment of a long-held dream to be a writer. I’ve been taking classes with Maureen ever since.
Maureen offered a safe space to process my grief out loud. She nudged me and encouraged me until I transformed from a scared and timid writer into someone who is now able admit out loud that I am a writer. I have written personal essay, poetry, and fiction, much of it delving into families, how they come to be, and the relationships involved. Maureen opened the doorway into poetry and showed me that it can be a vessel that holds some of my deepest hopes and griefs and dreams.
Several of the poems born in Maureen’s classes now have a home in my poetry collection, Counting Colors: a journey through infertility. Many of my words, including those found within the pages of Counting Colors, would not exist without Maureen and her skill and care as a writing midwife.”