Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to feature Scott LaMascus’s poem “The Seventh Age of Shakespeare’s Father” as our third featured chapbook poem of Issue 9: Summer 2025. You can find more poetry in their chapbook, The Edited Tongue: A Family’s Year with ALS, published in August by Bottlecap Press.
The Seventh Age of Shakespeare’s Father
—Day 3
My father began telling his stories about me as a child
at eighty-six years old, his manly voice now gone,
typing pithy lines from a crisp mind—my prayer at five,
a poem at ten. I hadn’t known he was listening
and today, he leaves nothing unsaid, I remind him.
We play these roles every day, pass notes back
and forth at the speechless, crackling fire, write
little songs onto his marker board—notes on the herd,
tractor, details on his business and deeds, his wife,
grandkids born and unborn, lines said and unsaid.
I lift him from bed to chair, push him from bedroom
to where I think he wants to go, clean his glasses
and study his eyes, the only window left open to me
to gaze onto stages where he’s playing the deathbed.
This is for everything you put me through, he might say.
I could say the same now, but we play out this final scene,
sans grand statements of a Lear, no panic of Polonius,
no oblivion in our script, tender tragedy of quotidian love.
(This poem was first published by The Calendula Review. It is published here with the author’s permission.)
About the Poem
Of all of the cruelties of ALS, loss of voice is among its most devastating, as this chapbook tries to show. ALS is uncertain in duration, always fatal and crushingly difficult for patient and caregivers in matters physical, spiritual and financial.
This poem hit me hard last winter, sitting a moment near my late father, as our family was trying to absorb the meaning of his ALS diagnosis. He was finally resting in a power-chair pushed as near to the wood stove as we dared. We were burning the last ricks of wood he had chopped and laid by. My soul was in dialogue with Shakespeare’s legendary lines on “entrances” and “exits” in his monologue for Jaques in As You Like It. I wondered, if “all the world’s a stage,” what role had I just been assigned?
Author Bio
Scott LaMascus is a writer in Oklahoma City whose chapbook, The Edited Tongue, traces his father’s ALS diagnosis and death. Recognized for bringing the power of poetic arts to a devastating neurological disorder and its impact on patient and family, the chapbook has been adopted by Mercy Health as a five-state awareness project for ALS Awareness Month 2025. The poems have been reviewed or published in Rare Revolution magazine, The Calendula Review, Medmic, Persephone, OJCPCH, and Ars Medica. His debut collection, Let Other Hounds, was long-listed for the Idaho Poetry Prize and is forthcoming in 2026 from Fernwood Press, Newberg, Ore.
From The Edited Tongue: A Family’s Year with ALS
This medical memoir in verse arcs across a family’s challenges with late-onset ALS. The poems grapple first with the father’s literal loss of voice, then the frustrating search for a diagnosis, increased caregiving stress, and daily devastations of each new loss brought by the brutal disease also known as Lou Gehrig’s.
Contents
Chapbook Poem: The Blessed Knot by Li-Young Lee
“A well-made poem is a knot, but not a tangle. The well-made knot of a poem can disentangle readers from illusion, to free them from confusion. Poetry is a form of disillusionment.” Read the July Chapbook Poem by Li-Young Lee along with words from the poet.
“This work is an archive of my attempts to become more familiar with who I am, and why I am here, to immerse myself in these ancient spiritual questions…” Check out five poems and five images by Laynie Browne along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: Creating Space by Lisa Sewell
“Yoga, the walks, and the writing became a daily exercise in paying attention—to the world, to the bodies in the world around me and to my own body…” Read the Excerpt Poem of the Month for July 2025 by Lisa Sewell along with words from the poet.
“My poetry tries to examine … the difference between the lives we live inside ourselves and the lives we expose to other people.” Read five poems by William Doreski along with a few words from the poet.
July ’25: Poetry Readers Wanted
Read a note from editor Aiden Hunt about PCR’s Summer poetry and new poetry reader opportunities brought by our growing original poetry submissions.
Four Poems by allison whittenberg
“I grew up as a film buff and I loved reading Hollywood Babylon. Over the years, I have learned to separate the truth from the myths.” Read four poems by allison whittenberg along with a few words from the poet.
Chapbook Poem: August Peaches by Winshen Liu
“I wanted to sit with a particular end-of-summer indulgence, where a host has saved specialty foods to welcome visiting friends and family–fancy chocolate, favorite sodas, a certain snack.” Read a poem from Winshen Liu’s chapbook Paper Money along with words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: Cheesecake Factory by Max McDonough
“This poem lives in the weirdness of the suburban mall spaces a lot of us grew up visiting (or loitering in!), places that feel like they could be anywhere and nowhere at once.” Read a poem from Max McDonough’s chapbook along with words from the poet.
Three Poems by Alexandra Meyer
“Love had made me stronger in a lot of ways, but also showed me the weakest parts of myself that were left crystallized for him to see. This was much like wood morphing into rock during the petrification process.” Read three poems by Alexandra Meyer along with words from the poet.
Three Poems by Kristiane Weeks-Rogers
“Anchored by sensory detail, the poem journeys between childhood safety and adult experience in a canyon town shaped by rivers and monsoons. … This poem is a meditation on time, tastes, and tenderness of memory.” Read three poems by Kristiane Weeks-Rogers along with words from the poet.
Chapbook Poem: The Seventh Age of Shakespeare’s Father by Scott LaMascus
“This poem hit me hard last winter, sitting a moment near my late father, as our family was trying to absorb the meaning of his ALS diagnosis … I wondered, if ‘all the world’s a stage,’ what role had I just been assigned?” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for September 2025 along with words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: Landscape with footprints in ash by Selma Asotić
“When I want to sound smart, I say things like: a poet is one who leaves. When I accept that I’m not very smart, mostly just perplexed and a little scared, I write poems about ghosts and circle farms.” Read a poem from Asotić’s new book, Say Fire, along with words from the poet.
“All of my encounters with the U.S. healthcare system follow the protocols of the ridiculous. This poem, couched in the conventions of the contemporary sonnet, explores my latest, decisive encounter with a doctor’s office.” Read three poems by Robin Arble along with words from the poet.
September ’25: Best of the Net Nominations
Editor Aiden Hunt announces Philly Chapbook Review’s Best of the Net 2026 anthology nominations in this editor’s note and provides links to the nominated poems.
Verses of Mourning: in the aftermath by Jessica Nirvana Ram
“[Ram] presents a revealing and heartbreaking collection that asks the reader to think about what they remember the most about those they have lost.” Read Alex Carrigan’s full review.
“This poem reckons with our capitalist, product-driven society to ask people why disabled stories are only relevant if they portray the ‘other’ overcoming trauma to become abled people’s inspiration porn.” Read three poems by Makena Metz along with words from the poet.