1 It’s a woman’s crowning glory, Mother said, and she brushed my hair a hundred strokes at night, rolled it in rags so my long curls would bounce below the barrettes, wound them around her finger each morning. She pulled so hard my eyes watered. I hacked each curl off with kitchen shears when I turned twelve.
2 “Don’t ever cut it,” he said, and his hands were tender beside my face, then drifted through, beyond. Mother’s mantra became my own. I brushed until it gleamed. Once he washed it for me like men do in Hallmark films. His fingers tangled, but I didn’t cry since women never cry in scenes like that.
3 The doctor said it would fall out, but the clumps in the shower drain startled me. I went to a salon and told the girl to cut it off, right down to the scalp. She cried and I cried and she wouldn’t let me pay.
My poem “What I Picked for the Journey” was published today by the wonderful Writing in a Woman’s Voice. My thanks to editor Beate Sigriddaughter.
What I Picked for the Journey
A strong walking stick that fits my grasp. Oatmeal raisin cookies. A few favorite poems. A heart-shaped pebble for my pocket.
I’ll leave on a day that promises sun and breeze and animal-shaped clouds. I’ll find wild blueberries and spring water pure as a child’s wonder.
I’ll pass the hours remembering forsythia in April, the softness of a baby’s skin, campfires, the smell of bread fresh from the oven. I’ll sleep where the milky way tumbles through the night sky and trees whisper to the wind.
The first of 3 poems published today in the wonderful Voice-Virtual. My thanks to editor Jim Lewis.
Long walks and sunshine. Not the mileage I used to clock nor the speed, but birdsong and daffodils I’d have missed before. An outing with granddaughters, peeking into their lives and loves, their favorite band (loud) and the in spot for burgers and fries. The quiet, driving home. Dinner with friends, repeating tales decades old, tsking at AI, cryptocurrency, Tik Tok, X. Evenings of old sweatshirts and slippers takeout and TV, my dog chasing rabbits in his sleep.
Silver Birch Press published this poem today in their “Mothers” series. My thanks to Melanie, the Silver Birch Editor.
Thirteen Ways of LookIng at My Mother-in-Law After Wallace Stevens
An Arkansas farm woman, Boby loves Sunday drives after church to see what folks are planting and to tidy up the family graves.
In spring, when the fields are ripe with fresh manure, Boby takes a deep breath. “Smells like money,” she says.
Honesty is her virtue. She told me once “You’re not exactly what we hoped for.”
Boby has no use for corsages. “Give me something I can put in the ground.“ She has eight flowerbeds— lilies, gardenias, azaleas, roses.
Each granddaughter and great-grand has a quilt pieced from a lifetime of scraps— prints, plaids, ginghams and a bit of lace. “They look pretty good from the road,” she says.
Her mother lived on the next farm over, her uncles just beyond, ripples of family for a thousand acres, bickering, loving, gossiping, mourning.
Boby buried two husbands. The first was hers for a quarter century. The second just four years, “a bonus” she said after forty years a widow.
We spend fall weekends shelling wash tubs of pecans—300 pounds some years—our fingers raw and stained dark as the delta loam.
Always a stray underfoot—cat or mongrel dog. They show up on her doorstep. She shrugs and takes them in. The cats are all called Katie.
She played piano at church as the congregation dwindled to a half-dozen stooped, gray forms. She never cared much for the preacher.
When she turned 90, Boby announced she’d give up driving October first. Took us awhile to figure out her birthday was the 6th, and she knew she’d flunk the eye test.
She killed a rabid skunk in a neighbor’s driveway with the shotgun she keeps under the bed. “Sorry I can’t stay to visit,” she told her friend. “I’ve got a cake in the oven.”
Now 96, she lives alone, as bent, stubborn and fragile as wisteria, children scattered from acreage bought a century ago. No money in farming these days. “They’ll carry me away from here in a pine box,” she says.
First published in Third Wednesday Poetry Journal.
The third poem published in the wonderful Rusty Truck this week.
Harbor Woman
She takes them in — the peddler, minstrel, gypsy. Townsfolk speak in wanton whispers, how she beds each one. They rebuke their budding daughters who mime her loose-hipped stroll. Addled by her lustered hair, full lips, boys are whipped for where their hands go in the night. But the same wives who beat their sons, go in darkness for her herbs so they will bleed again. Men, lured by musk and breasts that push beneath her shawl, dream her while astride those dowdy wives, conjure her cries in their grinding. Beside her hearth, sojourners tell of war and greed and mutiny, of realms where she could dance for kings, wear silks, call maids to brush her hair. They tempt her to break free, but she knows her place is here, knows she is the wellspring of sweet water for parched village tongues.
My thanks to Corey Cook, editor at Red Eft Review for publishing this poem.
The one that’s 10 years old — its leather soiled and supple, lining grayed by a thousand ins and outs of billfolds, keys, candy. The purse fits me, softening with use, sagging into the middle of itself, scarred by day to day, but refusing to concede to age, zippers still meshing, handle still carrying its weight, stitching still strong.
The 3rd of my poems published by Verse-Virtual. There are so many beautiful poems in this issue. I’m honored to be among them.
Seaweed calligraphy at the tide’s edge. A crab tracks through, smears the ink. I wait for the fog to lift. The gulls argue over someone’s sandwich crust, get on with survival. I remember your words, the undertow.
The second of three poems published by Verse-Virtual.
I see you so seldom now, after the move, covid, different mates and politics. We’re like Frost’s two paths, decided on luck, fate, promises we kept. How are you, my friend? Do we know each other now, or just times past, shared when we were young? Sit down. Have some tea and the cookies you taught me to make that afternoon in August.
Sarah Russell Poetry 