A full year of poems, a new one every day, from the poets of Virginia (radiating out from Hampton Roads) on the theme of Woman - who she is, who she is not, who she ought to be, her essence, how she sees herself, how women see her, how men see her, how children see her, how the classics see her, how different cultures see her, how history and cultures and mythology see her and have seen her, and on and on ...
Submit your poem(s) for this project to
themindworm @yahoo.com for consideration. Be sure to write "2010 Woman Poetry Project" in the subject line.
the voice and publishing arm of Chesapeake Bay Poets, in conjunction with MIDS WIDE OPEN-Virginia Celebrates Women In the Arts, and supported by Poetry Society of Virginia and Hampton Roads Writers.
"At summer's end the blue crab migrates out to
the Atlantic to die," says William Warner, "but
some of the females, the sook, come back,
barnacled and dulled by sea mosses, to begin
life anew."
healing wounds my sister came to me
walked up greeting me with a hug
i can't remember the last time
that she approached me first
her phone message said her daughter's in town
we're having a cookout so come i hope you can come
the voice i heard wasn't immediately recognizable to me
something had changed in her voice
i know that i have changed
months and months ago i prayed for her to forgive me
and for me to forgive her
i prayed for 40 days and nothing happened
months passed and i chose to ask for a favor
yes she said she could try nothing happened
weeks passed and then the phone call
i went to her expecting nothing
tension we'd fed and watered for years
seemingly suddenly lifted
i smiled she smiled
i do not expect her acceptance of me or a friendship with her
but i did get a healing what i got was forgiveness
that she approached me first
You did shorthand
and long math
then traded sectrets,
Margot and you.
Like blossoms on
an apple tree,
your affection for
Peter ripens slowly.
You offer
him an apple
and wait for results.
The cat sleeps in a stupor of musical breezes
loaded with somnulent chimes and finches' chat,
waking from time to time to lick a stripe or scratch
a twitch, then spills itself again on Laura's settee,
too drunk to mind the brawling crows or pounding
from the wood shop where my daughter is making
a dollhouse and sweats as she rasps her plank
or labors with a back saw.
Sometimes she mars the wood and has to start over,
learning faith weighs more than force
in the art of getting it right, her dream house.
A wren flits back and forth building a nest
in the beams, in the pine-sweet air
where spending oneself is sleep bursting open.
This sister stood up. It was after amen,
it was after pie. Wires had climbed, singing
through the wall. Tin overhead eased the house
upward soundless as smoke, true as fire
at the tip of a steeple. She stood slowly
like a yawn. They found her holding
the backs of chairs, red in the cheek like a slap.
She elevated her arms and bent her legs
in suspicious ways; she wanted her toes
in the ground, never yanking free. Like young
trees not in leaf, she was a sweet threat,
had the acre all angles in the sun.
Full-length she unfolded for their eating,
the parent who smiled, the one who scolded.
She learned insides of cupboards and drawers;
she charted warmth climbing radiators,
trusted in plumbing, the house a cylinder
breezing around her like a reed. She lurked
in hiding like a joist, but wore the resting
place of every nail. To use the mouth,
venture words, is to wonder whether
sound is the throat's or the dark's. She swayed,
newly put up and straightened, in upstairs
windows, rippling the sheerness of night.
The years heaped on chairs smelled of wear as they
spilled their lively logic. A hobbled one
had to smoke. The one all groans cursed when she
tried to commiserate. One smeared ashes
on its brow, the combusted church. Year
upon counted year pretending like rugs,
shaken, beaten (grit in the mouth) to be
the same. Steady the ladder on the landing:
Tiptoe, swipe the ceiling web. It all goes up:
curtains, plates on shelves, the attic trap
swallowing steps. Clean each spring and cleanse
a year--an organ pipe to pump with voice,
Caught in a real smile, she'd thought
chance was not in her corner,
but there she was tweed jacket,
poofed-up hair, ever-present red nails,
in San Francisco stepping to the street.
It had taken all of her fifty-five years,
everything up till then a gamble,
not many wins, bearable losses,
a kind of non-streek.
If she'd been in on the joke, understood
there wasn't much time left,
would she have gone back to Vegas?
She was dying even then, in increments,
cell by cell by cell, but this isn't about that.
This is about snap-shot shoe-drop seconds
when a dream you put aside comes true,
happens right then and is so right,
such a surprise, a friend takes a picture,
a real picture, the kind of photograph
strangers pick up to examine because,
not knowing why, they have to.
It's easy to let opportunities pass
when they are too much of themselves,
like inconceivable sculpture
buried in stone blocks.
Half-blind and single-minded,
we cower in the familiar, recoil
when a fresh idea slaps us hard.
You can't plan for this,
there are no shoulds or ifs.
Choices come and go so fast
it's almost out of our hands. Almost.
When you smiled at me during lunch,
I thought of Mama, knowing
this was an extraordinary moment
My camera was in my suitcase.
The problem
with broken hearts is
that Super Glue is a carcinogen.
Therefore, they can't be easily repaired.
They can only be consoled.
Broken hearts must be closely monitored.
At first, they are stunned
unaware that injury has even occurred.
Often, only close friends can provide diagnosis.
Broken hearts can't speak for themselves
Therefore, they go about as if everything is fine until
they realize something isn't fine.
One morning they wake up,
reach for the place reserved for love,
only to find that
love has left the body.
They begin to wonder if they have died.
And if they are dead,
"Why am I still beating?"
Then broken hearts get scared,
start pounding,
break through ribcages,
often cause nausea or drunken binges.
They actually bargain with bartenders
consult architects and seamstresses,
think that perhaps this is all a joke
or a dream
or a drunken stupor
and they have merely misplaced love
and love will come pick them up if they call.
'Cause love never lets broken hearts drive drunk.
So broken hearts call love at 3 AM
not realizing that love won't answer
and that love will pity their messages in the morning.
By morning, broken hearts are hung over
splitting their wounds deeper than
the sound of their favorite sex song.
And broken hearts begin to lag,
occasionally skip beats,
miss work
provoke tear ducts to random downpours,
contemplate suicide,
and homicide
and lobotomies.
And you can't talk to broken hearts
about how hearts don't have brains
so lobotomies are out of the question
because broken hearts are trying to heal
and healing comes in many forms.
Sometimes broken hearts are more
aggressive with healing
start building walls and damns
keeping the part of the heart that feels
isolated from the part that thinks.
Because broken hears are often the result of combat
and they must choose life over limb.
Who needs that left ventricle?
We have friends who will pump blood for us,
fill our chambers with thoughts like
"It is better to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all"
or
"Think of all the other fish in the sea"
And sometimes this works.
Sometimes broken hearts take vacations,
sit on boats,
drop lines into water,
and catch some new happiness.
Other times,
broken hearts must consult lawyers,
close joint bank accounts,
take the children and go live with their mother.
Sometimes broken hearts go dancing
their chests as open and revealing as their low-cut shirts
You can spot them on the dance floor
all by themselves moving in a way that you
actually see them replace their heartbeats
with the beat of the music
or the heartbeats of strangers
dancing dangerously close.
Because broken hearts can
easily become kleptomaniacs
stealing any hearts or pieces of hearts they can
because something has to fill the hole
they have in their own
And if Frankenstein can be reborn with dead parts,
"Why can't I use the parts of others to preserve myself?"
Because baby this is war
and this is love
and all is fair here
all is allowed here.
Except quick fixes.
Because what no one wants to admit
is that broken hearts are life-long injuries
Like arthritic knees or leukemia
they can remain in remission for years
only to return on rainy days
or during wedding ceremonies.
They can begin to leak or crack
like teeth fillings
Sometimes what broken hearts consider scar tissue
is merely a scab
and scabs fall off in water
and are hard not to pick at.
So when broken hearts have completed
what they they think is healing
they jump head first into water
or accidentally start to recall love
because they are tired of being numb to life.
Or broken hearts rip open old wounds
to compare this love to that love
or this new love's sprained beginning
to the break of the one that came first.
This is because broken hearts are always uncertain
split down the middle
trying to connect
to all the places they cut off.
And if you thought cell phone reception
caused tricky communication
broken hearts are still using tin cans and string.
Because you can't use cell phones around them
those things could seriously mess with people's hearts.
And you can't reason with broken hearts
They too often experience hysterical deafness
and are incapable of listneing
'cause after all hearts don't have ears.
They have four chambers
capable of living together or alone
yet unable to ever be fully repaired
The problem
with broken hearts is
that we all have them.
The problem
with broken hearts is
that none of us wants to admit it.
The problem
with broken hearts is
that the only way to fix them is to love them
Is the ticket they sell you
to ride the London Subway (Tube)
when you're staying close to town,
not venturing out too far afield
then coming home a different way,
not sure where you're headed next,
no need for a Return.
"It's so expensive!" I complain
but my friend Sal, who has always been
a much more savvy traveler than I, says
"There's ways around it."
"Legal ways?"
"Just ways. I always ride way past
Zone One, and never pay full fare.
If you like, I'll show you how."
And to tell you the truth I think about it,
as the train flashes past and I'm caught
in the warm blast of the dark tunnel breeze,
but in the end I decide to play by the Tube rules.
So I wait my turn patiently at Lancaster Gate
for the couple in front of me to buy their Returns,
and when the ticket vendor asks me,
"Zone One Single, Luv?"
I say, "Yes, very single,"
and use the ticket I was given
which means I'm free to head out,
not sure exactly where,
and I'll stay in bounds--
but I don't have to come back.
And if I do, I know I'll have to pay.
In late Summer we walked past
rows of boxwood, houses where porch
swings had folded the accordion
sounds of wind and rocking away.
At dusk, as though to hurry
us along the path, fireflies--
also called June bugs
here--circled our heels.
The hours are always ripening,
like fruit we have chosen
with our own hands.
We climbed the stairs and poured
wine to make the glasses ring,
toasting the future, which means
what cannot return.
At the beginning of the new
year, I slid open all the drawers
in my house and found a nostalgia
which was the color and odor of a different
season in another country--
preserved skeletons of flowers,
brittle as dry wings, sheets of hand-
writing, ambiguous as the sea.
When I lie down to sleep a tree
rises up in the level space
behind my eyes, its arms chalky
like ash, its bodice thin as a paper
shade or the shadow cast by a lamp.
I gather the leaves at its base, I gather
the singing that sings to me, that yet resides
somewhere high up in the branches
that I cannot see.
It was late fall, early in the morning
And she was at her usual spot
In the City Dump.
Sitting on a small crate
Made her search easier.
She liked to pick through
The wonderful variety of rags,
Looking for pieces useful o saleable.
One time she found a pair of gloves --
Not just one, but two and matching.
She felt very elegand that day
As she strolled back to her
She enjoyed the unexpectedness--
Never knowing what she'd find
Or how she'd use it when she did.
It was always a blessing when
She found something whole.
Like that tiny basket made with
Colored glass beads and safety pins.
Mostly she'd look for plastic bags
because that meant 'category'-
Things of a kind that folks would
Throw out on the dump
For discriminating folks like her
Who had known real quality.
She had enough experience
To separate the good from the bad.
Her crate home was comfortably
Done with scrounged objects.
She was daring enough to make her bed
of large bags of plastic bags.
She didn't even explore its contents.
That gave her an exquisite feeling.
Not knowing what those bags might
Conceal in their midst - just imagine,
Her sleeping on such luxury!
This day wasn't going too well -
Nothing caught her eye.
Either it didn't fit or had no style.
But oh, now here was something -
A beautiful lace handkerchief,
Torn on one corner but no matter.
It felt so nice even in her rough hand.
She stopped by the homeless shelter
To shower and to wash the handkerchief.
She pressed it on the mirror and waited
While it dried - noting the envy
Of the ladies as they passed the mirror.
She folded it ever so carefully.
And went home to find a safe place
For her very nice handkerchief.
It was of the finest linen, like silk,
She thought it was the possibly
The loveliest she had ever owned.
She put it on the small box by her bed.
It warmed her heart as the chill of winter
Sifted through the tiny openings
In the walls of her home.
And that's where they found her
Sleeping in death on her bag of rags
With the fur stole and a diamond or two.
Covering her face was the loveliest
Lace handerchief she had ever owned.
Grief comes
Like a prickle in the mind
Rises in the throat
Wells in the back of the eyes
All before the conscious thought
The song on the car radio
Wasn't even the one he liked.
No reason at all
To stir that feeling
Sharp stick in the still pond
Must mean
I'm still alive
"Don't cry because it's over; smile because it happened."
--Dr. Seuss
Once a mother
took a shower
when her kids
were napping.
A small decision,
a small investment,
like cleaning out
the closets or
vacuuming the stairs.
The universe, shocked
at her presumption,
inspired her four-year-old
son to climb
to heaven. Later
she found him
hanging from
the blinds' cord,
her son's last
struggle silenced
by her last
serene shower.
Life support
let him linger
for their last
family portrait,
taken by a fighter-pilot
friend. The heart
monitor ticked away
the last seconds
of life.
The warrior's hand
shuddered
at their brave smiles.