Summer Movement
My wildness, wings of a June bug,
tucked in, hardly seen,
hides like the June bug’s metallic underbelly,
how smooth sorrow yolks over her green-gold back.Her wildness, more fantastic up close,
Ambles around with a hiss-click, green-gold
walk or movement made ordinary
in her small unfolding of webbed wings.Oval body, taking your wings to flight,
make me so centered as you above the grass.
~*~
Women of the House
A sister who is a mother
and a belly full for two.A woman with eyes like saucers.
a bent mouth—I have no cup.Another who chews her vowels.
jaw tight with a stiff neck.The elder matriarch sitting
wild and nodding in elastic skin.Our dead watching over,
at the table, in the kitchen, out the windowInto the wide green yard
~*~
Letter from Psyche to Her Sister
My house, a house of words,
Is lost on you.
The gilded edge of myth, its shining surface,
The surrounding rose and aster, waste.You seek a literal world
Where a man becomes a husband,
Flesh, belly, bone, neutered.
A woman becomes a wife—I sleep with a metaphor and should tell you
Everyday I am less afraid,
Even as I find myself
In the moon of many pages, turning the leaf.
~*~
Contributors' Notes : Hives and Covens : Womb Poetry Home