Sitting here on this hill, I watch the ghosts of burning wood rise from behind the low mud walls of huts that cluster the foothills. In each of them, a woman, perhaps helped by her daughter is fanning a fire, rolling out rotis and blistering them on red flames. All the little children must be [...]
Thoughts on Becoming a Crone by Elizabeth Glixman
There are variegated color hairs on my head, Yarn all fuzzy and wild One inch from my scalp there is red Lush auburn youth. Below the white Threads winked with gray waving, Roots visible like tree arms against the sky. Crone means old ewe, An old you That you do not recognize. Do old ewes [...]
Elsie Turner by Juleigh Howard Hobson
Every evening at 6, Elsie Turner drinks her juice. That is what she does every single day. That’s what I think, lately, when I’m pouring the juice out into my glass. Every single evening at six. Every evening Elsie Turner uses the old fashioned glass with the gold and black stagecoaches printed on the outside [...]
Eucalyptus Moonlight by Julie Ann Shapiro
In the interlocking limbs of two eucalyptus trees I see your soul. Can you know it’s me gazing at you from the window? Do you know I dream how it feels to be joined in wood, not flesh? I see elephant tusks and the flesh of paper in your limbs. My boyfriend calls, and says [...]
Grande Femme by Ellen de Vries
I went home, but I’d grown to outsize the furniture. My fingers were even longer than my mother’s hands. Like perspective had misjudged me or distance itself. Mother cried a little, You’ve grown she said. I bent myself into an old chair; the room was clean, ready for me, but I stayed the night there [...]
Dead by Jane Joritz Nakagawa
in the voice of the dead assorted bodies tempt us in a basket speak to the dead they guffaw back enfold in the breeze a tree the tree of everlasting while not paying attention azaleas spring from graves of the dead cut and sold like genitalia in the middle of the night robbed of potential [...]
The Stain by Beate Sigriddaughter
“The worst was the maggots.” That was the accepted punch line of an already firmly established family legend. Lucy had heard it first when she was six. At thirty-eight, she still sat on the edge of her chair waiting for her favorite parts with fairytale anticipation when her parents told it again, as they did [...]
Thoughts During Marilyn Waring’s Lecture by Deborah Hedd
Marilyn told of women and hot steaming dung used for fuel, plaster for houses, fertilizer: dung, life-giving, treasured birthday gift for a desperate gardener of a dry garden. What about world meltdown coming? A questioner asked. Marilyn grew quiet, thoughtful. She spoke of dire omens in other countries. Those who have the most (like the [...]
Unlocking Mother by Del Sandeen
The castoff locs lie the casket next to the woman’s body like a lover. They look almost forlorn, as if wondering why they were beside the woman and no longer crowning her head. Mourners passed by and once in a while, a hand would reach out and graze the locs with no fear before withdrawing. [...]
Ami McKay
by Misty K. Ericson In The Birth House, author Ami McKay tells the story of Dora Rare, a young woman growing up in early 1900s Nova Scotia. Apprenticed to the local midwife, Dora learns first-hand about the miracle of birth and the special bond among women. Following the midwife’s death, Dora becomes the soul provider [...]
