By Christie Axson Gardiner
A tropical storm in the Everglades,alone on a boat, we are baptizedby immersion from the sky: a remissionof our sins. Into Buttonwood Canalthe boat carries its unlikely pilgrims.With a sound no louder than the slip fromlife to death, a crocodile breaks the water’sskin then glides parallel, portside.I am not afraid. I see her now,this scale-haloed, …
By Olivia Winward
After “The Kiss” by Gustav Klimt Do not ask me why I close my eyes as his golden warmth encircles me. Do not tell me how my fingertips tremble where they touch him, tucked around his throat. Do not look too long at the shoulder I bared while unearthing all my silent cares, which somehow …
By Sherilyn Stevenson
My daughter gifted me Maira Kalman’s “Women Holding Things,” a themed treasure of art and poetry that entices readers through the surprising and not-so-surprising ways we hold on to people, objects, hurt, and more. Sometimes whimsical, often wise, Kalman reveals a core duty and privilege of female identity. Each of the three Prose pieces we …
By Vivian Pfleger
Grandma Ada died two months ago, and we buried her just as summer turned into fall. Now the leaves are gone from the big cottonwoods along the creek that runs past the road into town, and light coming in over the mountains is gray. Mom and I are going to clean out her house. She’s …
By Sarah Colby
That bath was my undoing,a ritual ended in ruin—the billow of the king’s cloaka rooftop shadow I never saw,his summons unexpected. To refuse the king is death—most days I wish I had.Instead, over and over I turnmy head away from the sharavof his unfamiliar breath. When he sent for youI waited with dates and honeycraving …
By Erin Kahn
what if She was alwaysdeathless woman who wombed the earthstringing the stars like tinsel beadssmall-minded men wrote her outthe patriarchs, apostles, kingsscissored her out of the storyif men do not want methey shall not have mepurple mother who polished the sandunfolding trees with a wet whisperso She kept silentshut her box of wonderswithdrew from her …
By Maria Mortensen Davis
for Crystal She had come to fold my mounting laundry—the Relief Society, embodied—on one of those early hollow dayswhen I sat frozen and numb, my new baby(and both of my others) suddenly too heavy to hold,having searched my heart for mother-love and found only tears. She was a stranger then, just a name I had …
By Kate Romney
On her deathbed she strains not to leave the heavinessof the sky, which is part of a heaviness made upof once thick thighs that thundered in two tones after darkwhen she was only a daughterwho danced by lifting the lips of her flowered, flowing skirts,it is also made up of the heaviness of guttural grunts, like …
By Marilyn Bushman-Carlton
Love and romance (and tradition) meant giving it upfor the privilege of belonging to someone. What girl dressed for her wedding smells death in the white orchid,sees imperfections in the bright diamond? How easily I let it go, boxed it with a school play script,pep club outfit, rogue dreams of college, and baltered willingly into …
By Susan Jeffers
Mary Magdalene moves Through the garden Notices buds of Cyclamen Lupine Red poppies Anything to not think About the only thing She can possibly think About Him Always Almond trees in blossom Around the tomb A sweet smell Soft sighs of Birdsong Windsong She has wept all night Tears are all she has left of …