#181: "Y" by Colleen Carias

~This poem was previously published in Sin Fronteras: Writers Without Borders Journal (2011).

 Y

  

I have another X

so I am dragged from the tent

kicking  yowling  as gray grandma chides

go sleep with the girls in the house

Boo and his buds can camp outside

they have a Y instead

can roll in red dirt and fart and squirt

aim spitballs   moon the neighbors  belch a song

and I should comb my mass of hair

wear a curly dress my brother would dare to see me in

ten is too old  the wagging finger scolds

to sit on common mango trees  shoot

the breeze with geckos grazing up my arm

I watch through glass   wild colts passing

under the weeping window   watch me

*****

#180: "Meditation 32" by Julie Marie Wade

~This essay was first published in Fourth Genre (2013). 

old.      

Once upon a time, there was a girl who was not an orphan tended by a woman who was not a nanny in a red brick house that could never be, by any calisthenics of imagination, a castle—

though there was a view of the sea.

That girl sitting at the table was me.  That woman standing by the stove was my mother.

We lived then in the late splendor of catalogues.  Everything we ever wanted could be found on a glossy page.  Locate the little white letter in the upper right corner, then call and place your order.

I liked to linger in lingerie, with my scissors and my paste and my tablet of red construction paper.  These were old catalogues, mine to cut and alter.  My mother stirred a pot of something frothy and said, “Pack a suitcase.”  This was only pretend.  She wanted me to choose the clothes I would take on the trip that comes after the wedding.

If the man was there, the man who was every day less my savior and more my father, he would fill a glass with water and lean beside the sink.  “Did someone order a honeymoon salad?”  I never got it.  I shook my head.  Then, he’d chuckle—“Lettuce alone!”

I noticed over time the faces of women in the catalogues.  There were not many of them, so the same woman wore garment after garment, sometimes with her hair let down or her lipstick lightly blotted.  One face I loved—the dark curls, the pert nose, the creamy complexion.  She posed in nightgowns, pajamas, matching bras and panties.  Once, I found her in a black lace body suit.  Though it seemed transparent, nothing was visible beneath it.  I expected a glimpse of her real body, but she had none.  She was like a doll arranged on a low chaise lounge: her elbow bent by someone else, a smile painted across her lips, her bright eyes unblinking.

“Have you found what you’ll wear on your wedding night?”  My mother leaned across the counter as I tore the page free and trimmed its edges.

“This,” I said, triumphant.

“That’s a little racy,” she murmured.  “Why don’t you try again?”

#179: Two Poems by Barbara Crooker

~This poem was previously published in St. Katherine Review (2013).

LES BOULANGERS

Blessed be the breadmakers of la belle France

who rise before dawn to plunge their arms

into great tubs of dough.  Blessed be the yeast

and its amazing redoubling.  Praise the nimble

tongues of those who gave names to this plenty: 

baguette, boule, brioche, ficelle, pain de campagne. 

Praise the company they keep, their fancier cousins: 

croissant, mille feuille, chausson aux pommes. 

Praise flake after golden flake.  Bless their saintly

counterparts:  Jésuit, religieuse, sacristain, pets de nonne.

Praise be to the grain, and the men who grew it.  Bless

the rising up, and the punching down.  The great

elasticity.  The crust and the crumb.  Bless

the butter sighing as it melts in the heat. 

The smear of confiture that gilds the plane.  

And bless us, too, O my brothers,

for we have sinned, and we are truly hungry.

*****