Women's History Month: Lynne Bronstein's "Sally Hemmings"

There are no known images of me

While his face decorates the five-cent piece.

Imagine me as the face on a coin.

They said I was

“Near white and very beautiful.”

They said some of our six children

Looked like him,

Proof that he fathered them.

Proof that only

Made him, third President,

Thomas Jefferson,

Look like quite the stud.

I was just the maid,

The companion, the one who sewed buttons

On the presidential clothes.

He freed my brothers.

His daughter freed me.

He educated my brothers

But not me.

I too, yearned to play the violin

But I was there to be played upon.

Six offspring.

Descendants,

Science still trying to prove

What I knew all the time.

For me this wasn’t

Political scandal.

Each child

Was a memento

Of a rendezvous.

The middle-aged, lonely widower

Finding in me the solution to his neglected desire.

Me finding in him,

A certain excitement,

Sparkling like the nickel

That now bears his likeness.

Then when my lying-in time came,

I pushed and clung to the bed post

And proved my courage six times over.

The men were lauded for winning battles.

I won the biggest battle.

I brought those six children into the world.

I suppose it was an error

To call our friend Washington.

The father of our country

When so many claim

My man as their ancestor.

But I,

I was

The Mother of Our Land.

I too,

Should have my likeness

Remembered on a coin.

Surrounded by six stars

For each of my children.

(c) 2019 Lynne Bronstein

Lynne Bronstein is a poet, a journalist, a fiction writer, a songwriter, and a playwright. She has been published in magazines ranging from Chiron Review, Spectrum, and Lummox, to Playgirl and the newsletter of the U.S. Census Bureau. She’s done four books of poetry and her first real crime story was published in 2017 in the anthology LAst Resort. Her adaptation of Shakespeare’s As You Like It was performed at two LA libraries. Recently her story “The Magic Candles” was performed on National Public Radio .She’s been nominated twice each for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net awards.

Don Kingfisher Campbell's An Alternate Sky

     Don Kingfisher Campbell, poet, educator, and editor of the San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly is not an artist who can be pigeon-holed into one specific literary category. He proves this truth with his newest chapbook, An Alternate Sky (copyright 2013 Don Kingfisher Campbell).

     If you know Campbell (and I do), then you can’t help but like him. He’s an amiable guy from Pasadena who works hard to make sure that he - and all the poets he nurtures - are fairly represented, respected, and have a turn at the mic - and he carries this principle into his poetry.

     An Alternate Sky contains 36 poems written in a similar style (narrative, short stanzas), but each one has a distinctive voice. There’s Campbell the romantic (“Fuck to the Future”, “Seven Courses”), the teacher/facilitator (“Workshop”, “Prose Poem Inspired by Perfection”, “Summer School Senryu”), the social critic-commentator (“Not So Still Lives”, “Big Bangs”, “CNN Universe”), and my favorite (and where I believe he shines best), Campbell the dreamer-philosopher (“Did I Planet”, “Issa Frequency”, “Curiosity”). Campbell is a poet who respects his work and audience in equal measure. Each poem visually and lyrically unfolds in the mind of the reader like a series of well-crafted films, as in the poem, “Curiosity,” a revelation of what gifts Campbell has gleaned from viewing the Mars Rover Curiosity’s pictures from the Red Planet:

Why can’t I walk

on this pebbly dirt?

Why can’t I traipse

up rocky brown slopes?

Why can’t I climb,

ridge by ridge, plateau?

Just because it is too far

to reach without a ship,

just because there’s not

enough money for a mission,

just because I will be dead

before an expedition leaves.

At least, I can enjoy the robot

photographs from the rover,

and without hesitation believe

I am seeing familiar earth,

minus plants, animals…

now sporting human-made debris.

Campbell the poet has much to teach us about the nature of fair-play, with ourselves and in relation to how we as wordsmiths interact with our poetry. With An Alternate Sky, it’s a lesson many writer-poets can learn and refer back to in the future.

Note: For those of who weren’t fortunate enough to take advantage of Poetry Super Highway’s "9th Annual Great E-book Free For All", you can still purchase Campbell’s newest collection, An Alternate Sky, as a gift for the poetry lover this holiday season, or better yet, as a gift to oneself.

An Alternate Sky, copyright 2013 Don Kingfisher Campbell, 36 pages, $10 (includes shipping and handling. Details at http://dkc1031.blogspot.com/2013/11/book.html )

© 2013 marie lecrivain