During a time when there is a distressing rise in conservative misogyny, Shivani Gupta’s debut chapbook my mother is a mixed metaphor (Rockwood Press, 2026) stands as a beautiful tribute to philogyny and motherhood. Through intimate metaphors and mindful details, Gupta scribes a narrative of a daughter growing into independence and her unabashed admiration for the woman who has loved her first: her mother.
The speaker clarifies that she is a daughter of an Indian family, following patriarchal traits with the expectations of a mother serving as a provider of comfort, a forgiving caregiver, and the rock for the family’s children. Another common characteristic of Indian motherhood throughout the chapbook is sharing food as a love language, one of my favorite examples expressed as “my mother’s love shows on my waist—climbs into / my rib cage, forms a protective layer around what i / tell her is my infallible heart.” (27)
In the chapbook’s titular poem, “mother as mixed metaphor,” these concepts are exquisitely depicted within the first four lines:
“my mother is a recliner with a massager,
heating & abundant side-pockets for snacks
overstuffed peanut butter & jelly sandwich
edges cut, well rounded, palatable to all ages” (7)
While the speaker often addresses her mother specifically, Gupta omits using “my mother” in her poems’ titles, acknowledging that there are certain histories which are inherited from generations before her.
In an Indian family, it’s not uncommon for mothers to watch as fathers “stand atop / spiraled staircases, ready for tripping / fortune waits for them / to give up before they arrive” (19). While the speaker’s own father “came back around / a chronic kind of sadness / his new normal” (25), it occurred after a childhood where “guilt breathed / into college son didn’t choose,” and “daughter… forever wears shirts oversized / comfort never fit right” (20).
By contrast, a mother’s thoughtfulness and compassion are dressed as quiet strengths comparable to forces of nature (“…almond eyes, wide, twisted and stormy,” “she is the life they mean when they say larger than life” (7)). How a mother “is juicy warm skies / torched at witching hour / gives light to another’s home.” (34) And then Gupta playfully zooms in to everyday treasures, where the speaker recalls her mother’s patience, how she “dialed the wrong number / often, but you were always listening” (26), or notes her mother’s tendency to hoard a mix-match collage, from ketchup packets, teatime biscuits, to birthday cards signed by the family. The speaker refers to herself as a “mirror” (16) of her mother, admiring and adoring their shared resilience, quirks, and origins.
Yet while she celebrates her mother and respects motherhood, noting that she is close to the age her mother gave birth to her—“freshly 30… with her almost 60” (28)—the speaker asserts that child-raising isn’t for her. Plainly, without metaphor, she states, “i will never hold something in me / that is younger, no version of us / to pass down” (10) and that “maternal instincts aren’t genetic” (13).
Despite her mother’s gentle pushing to give birth to grandchildren after the speaker’s marriage, the daughter remains firm in her decision to be childless. She is a tree “still branched / propelled into the future / with nieces and nephews,” (15), loving them and her choice as another legacy of hope for the women in their family, one she knows her mother—the one who always ate last at the dinner table—did not have a chance to experience in full. Respectfully, the speaker recognizes:
“i want to trust in my mother’s love
cocoon a closure, her lack of want
wrapped into a morning & a bite
of sun-blessed yolk—spilling, spilling, stop. (18)”
An adult daughter accepting her mother’s ways as “not stars, / but we are star adjacent,” (33) is a precious time of maturity that not all people can experience. Instead of causing conflict between them, the lack of personal want her mother has worries the daughter, who advocates for her mother to keep growing as a person without obligations to family, believing her mother will someday “shed mother layers / where the sea returns to ocean— / she will be born / again” (34).
I was deeply moved by the deceptive simplicity of the final poem, “mother as twenty questions,” a combination of sincere curiosity and existential inquiries. Zooming in and out of scope, the daughter encourages her mother to consider who she was before she had children, who she wishes to become, what she hopes to see. It’s a sweet window of perspective for her mother to consider, leaving the chapbook’s ending as part of an open-ended, ongoing conversation between them. I’m wondering how many selfless caregivers in this world may have needed to hear or ask themselves those same questions as well.
my mother is a mixed metaphor is Gupta’s delightful exploration into what women can be in life. I am grateful to read a chapbook where growing up isn’t always about the traumas or tragedies experienced; it can also be a jubilation of women’s choices and our forebearers, especially our mothers. Though I don’t share the same personal opinions regarding maternal instincts, I felt lighter as I read this wonderful ode to cisgender women. Whether they break the traditional family mold or not, women are capable of anything in Gupta’s poems.
my mother is a mixed metaphor is available from Rockwood Press
Heather Takenaga is a poet and writer born and raised in Riverside, CA. She is currently writing short stories and poetry. When she is not volunteering, she is drooling for cat cuddles, moonlit walks, and a reading vacation.
