3/26/2023 Poetry By Jane Ann Fuller Dave Cowley CC
DEAR YOUNG WOMAN-SELF I made pork chops again tonight chocolate pudding and picked rosemary right now a wolf moon rubs against the window listen if I had known winter comes insidious as rust in the body’s undercarriage stalled on the hills of good-bye-ing maybe I wouldn't confuse you with my daughter wouldn’t be asking who are you now it’s too late to erase who you will become finally I bought myself a high-tech telescope I think I see three-billion-year-old icecaps on the moon’s craters maybe it’s an omen how things blur inches two-hundred-thousand miles eleven light years from here how time finger-locks with regret until there's nothing but a taste for pork and chocolate I DRAW THE TAME NEGATIVE THINKING CARD FROM THE EMPATH ORACLE DECK DURING THE MINDFULNESS RETREAT AND FORGET TO PUT IT BACK I never was in love with Negative Thinking, it was more a series of one night stands, working late in the dimly lit conference rooms of my brain, sharing a cigarette in the parking lot, coffee and a cruller in the basement of Christ The King, darkness for darkness in the locker room showers at the community center natatorium—her face painted like a bird, eyes chalked in warrior white, hair wild as wings at her shoulders, décolletage shimmering with purple rocailles and silver, the whole of her wincing in ecstasy or cinematic pain, I stuffed her inadvertently into my lap top case after a class on Ayurveda and the perfectionist mind, how not to judge what we've become, free with who we are regardless I had no idea I lack testosterone or that peppermint oil will relax spasms in my neck but only enteric coated capsules work. Otherwise I might get GERD. I love these workshops-- how the women bring books to trade, Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. Tolle’s The New Earth, Gilbert’s Big Magic. And clothes to swap, scarves and sweaters worn like lovers long past their best but willing to keep us warm, or wear us out on the street to prove how generous our friends, our retro taste. Teacher reminds us not to compare our insides with others’outsides, which is good advice since this morning’s frost sticks to everything like bad luck. Jane Ann Fuller's Half-Life (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2021) was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Awards. Her poems appear On the Seawall, in One Art, Main Street Rag, Women Speak, Atticus Review, Shenandoah, B O D Y, All We Know of Pleasure: Erotic Poetry by Women, Project Hope (Center for Victims of Torture) and elsewhere, and work is forthcoming in Calyx and Blue Earth Review. Comments are closed.
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