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"He buys me
books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle
the mind.
I would like to learn. Could you tell me how to grow, or is it
unconveyed, like melody or witchcraft?" ---Emily Dickinson |
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for more poetry, check the poetry
archives
Selection
by Zenobia Chan
people ask me going home and looking after my son?
I pause without answer
this is my resistance regimen
the gaze is everywhere
locking me in the family
an ideal woman who should look after her son
this panopticon will not work on me
looking after my son is my affairs not you
my son is seven
differentiation between him and me is taking place.
Zenobia Chan is an RN, PhD candidate in the Department
of Social Work , The Chinese University of Hong Kong |
Thank You and Goodbye
by Andrea Kenkmann
You are lying on the bed,
intoxicated by pints of lager and
the sleeping tablets I dissolved in them.
I peel you into nakedness;
your regular breath is the rhythm to my movements.
My birthday present in the drawer is still in its plastic
box;
I tear it open, plug it in, switch it on --
a swarm of bees singing quietly and dancing around me.
Your left leg looks inviting and I discover
that it is easy,
up and down like mowing the lawn;
the right leg,
then I lift your left arm --
the stale smell of a day's work slightly distracts me
from my task of glory;
the right arm,
a quick whiz around your nipples just for fun,
and then I move down over your navel into your crotch
and I love the bzzz.
The proximity of my hand stiffens the centre
and makes moving around it more easy.
There, it's done! Now you can sleep like a baby.
You said you didn't like hair and
I'd better go now.
For more poems by this poet click here... |
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Winter
2001
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to other poetry
When We Talk of Love
by Joy Hewitt Mann
In the Dark
If infinity lies
beyond the term of night
like a drop of ink
balanced on a knife edge,
sorrow serrates the blade
and only love's whetting stone
can help us.
Lying
here
with your clothes
beside the bed, your scent
clinging precarious
like the sudden spark I felt
when tenderness struggled
from your eyes,
I am thinking
tonight earth has torn from orbit
we spin
both of us
arcing out
into the dark.
For more poems by this poet click
here... |
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Poetry and Survival
by Rochelle Hope Mehr
Looking and Doing
There are two kinds of people:
the people looking and the people doing.
The people doing are always looking
suspiciously at the people looking.
The people looking lick their wounds
and climb the closest tree.
I've wound myself tightly
around many maypoles.
I've tried to spring into action,
to leap into being.
But I always end up
relearning the same lesson:
Your place is here --
Don't budge.
For more poems by this poet, click here... |
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Stream Pebbles
by Laurie Aeta Pollack
Winter Come
Soft gray skies of coming winter
with muted light that sings of dreams
that chant a spell to banish
the heat that leaves earth worn and dull
that calls the biting snow energy
that drives away relentless summer blue
winter return and send away the too-bright sun.
For more poems by this poet click here... |
External Validity
by Michelle Holland
External Validity
At Goat Spring, our flat campsite
fills with three girls' voices.
Fat robins and thrashers all feathers and motion
join at the water's edge, and other animals
gather fifty yards away.
We hear them rustling leaves
to taunt us with their nearness.
The girls climb a slanted tree,
fallen in fire or wind or old age,
propped by another living tree.
They climb like bears,
clutch the sides and tell me
what they see from the top.
for more of this poem, and more poems
by this poet, click here... |
Collected Poems
by DC Gwinup
They're Packaged Better
What kind of cigarettes are those?
She said with a drawl.
Dunhill, they're British I think, I said.
Hmm. Well, these are Marlboro,
They're American
She said with a drawl.
I think she was making fun of me,
But luckily that was the only
Communication we had.
I don't miss her
Or her drawl.
For more poems by this poet click here... |
Native Tongue
by T Thomas
Phoenix
Lady Lazarus in her own right,
She has fallen time and time again.
Her heart rent,
She dreams of eating men -
Pleading with herself in waking hours
Not to make the same mistakes,
Wandering aimlessly,
But drifting toward a new dull ache.
She hasn't put her head in the oven,
But knows she's been burned.
For more poems by this poet click here... |
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Women
Writers is a bi-annual online Zine featuring women's resources.
Now, as part of those resources, we have provided this forum
for women who write creatively, as well as our scholarship
and links.
All work on this page
is copyrighted to the original author. |
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Meal
by Kelley Beeson
How To Be Engaged
Midnight in Pittsburgh has brought me to missing
the unflinching expanse of the Indiana skyline.
You have been gone only 7 hours
and already I need a glass of red wine
to get back to South Bend for a moment of big sky,
a moment of the calm that comes with generous space.
Does the self ever see what and where it is?
I knew nothing those years of the sneaky way
answers flew home.I knew nothing
of putting back together the members of memory.
Click here for more of this poem,
and more poems by this poet... |
Selections
by Barbara Spring
Hieros Gamos
On the way to Egypt
two lions bound in the dark
across level Earth.
The maned lion chases the lioness
and she stays ahead.
They carry desert
Nile and fertile delta.
They carry the royal sphinx.
Inside of them are the sun
and the darkness
of Africa.
Inside of the are the
four directions
and the center.
For more poems by this poet click here... |
These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things
by Yvette Walker
Self-Portrait
I am not who I think,
Bursting quietly out of a BA
Into glorious anonymity
Scrabbling around on the pebbly beach
Of the world for a word worth keeping.
Virginia Woolf weighed herself
Down with rocks, solid stones
Grand enough to drown with,
And, at this point,
I'd be happy to have come
Into the world as part
Of that English rubble.
At least, in some small way,
A ripple of literary history
I could have made,... for more of this poem,
as well as more by this author, click here... |
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Kim
Wells