Women's History Month: Saturday, March 27, 2021: Deborah Edler Brown's "Testament"

 Testament

I, being of sound mind and body, do hereby relinquish all hope of being other than who I am.

She put the pen down and looked at what she had written. It wasn’t her will she was writing, she realized, now that the words had hijacked her. It was her will. The cornerstone of will power and her much vaunted willfulness. Her will and testament: all she had to say about who she was and where she was going. And relinquish…that was the keeper. It sat well on the tongue.

I relinquish all right to opinions that are not mine, and all interest in opinions about me.

I relinquish any and all effort to make someone love me who does not, desire me who does not, or even like me. There is no perfume that will make me smell sweet to the wrong person, no shine that will make me his sunrise, not if he wants the moon. I surrender my need to be right, my need to be perfect, my need to be good.

I relinquish the knight in shining armor, the feeling that I’m owed something, the fear of failure and the fear of success.

I relinquish tomorrow, which will come on its own terms, and I relinquish yesterday, which is only shadow and scent. I empty my hands of all of my maybes and relax my fingers from perpetual grasping.

I relinquish the struggle, the blind cat fight I get into with everything I don’t understand. I surrender to the beauty of my soul’s own dream

This is my will and testament, and my will is thy will – the will of Spirit and my spirit – and I won’t let anything as small as my fearful personality fuck it up.

I sign here in faith and ink.

 

© 2021 Deborah Edler Brown

 

 

Deborah Edler Brown is an award-winning poet, writer, journalist, and author. Her work has appeared in such publications as Nimrod, So Luminous the Wildflowers, poeticdiversity, Altered Lanes, Blue Arc West, and Sisters Singing: Blessings, Prayers, Art, Songs, Poetry & Sacred Stories by Women. Her poem “Cubism” won Kalliope’s Sue Saniel Elkind Poetry Prize, and her fiction has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Deborah was born in Brazil, raised in Pittsburgh, and earned her degree in Creative Writing from Brown University. She resides in Los Angeles, where she is busy building communities among her characters and readers.

Women's History Month: Monday, March15, 2021: Two poems by Sarah Maclay, "Our Lady of the Goldfinch" and "Our Lady of the Chair"

 

Our Lady of the Goldfinch

 

Just one—yellow, yes, seemingly lonely

on her lap. Though she pets it, though the color

          is complicated by others—darker ones,

even against the morning’s orange air . . .

and then the striped wings in a child’s hand.

      Two slender, distant trees.

     And there are boys. The whole truth lying

on the grass. The rock they sit on—browning

               like a velvet moss, bugs and petals crowding bare

feet. A net of pine.

She can imagine someone,

someone to tell.

And sky, somehow, ripping through the fabric of a cloud,

             her dress.  As though her clothing tears from the inside, begins

to shred.

Everything needs stitching.

And night shows through—

in glimpses

if we could see its cracks  (and needles

needles

needles

needles

across the entire canvas).

 

 

 

 

 

Our Lady of the Chair

                                   

 

It will not be electric,

not for this exercise.

 

It’s a simple chair,

a calm chair.

 

Wooden.

in a wooden room.

 

Nothing else

in the room.

 

Nothing in the chair

that we can see.

© 2021 Sarah Maclay

Sarah Maclay’s The “She” Series: A Venice Correspondence, a braided collaboration with Holaday Mason (What Books Press), follows Music from the Black Room; her first full-length, Whore, which won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry, and The White Bride, a book of prose poems (all, UT Press). Her poems and essays have appeared in The American Poetry Review, FIELD, Ploughshares, Manoa, Blackbird, Hotel Amerika, The Best American Erotic Poetry, Poetry Daily, The Writer’s Chronicle, and Poetry International, where she served as book review editor for a decade. Her poetry has been supported by a COLA Master Artist Fellowship and a Yaddo residency, and awarded a Pushcart Special Mention. 

From 2008 – 2011, she served as artistic director of The 3rd Area, a reading series based in galleries in DTLA and Bergamot Station. A Montana native, graduate of Oberlin and VCFA, she teaches at LMU and conducts periodic workshops at Beyond Baroque.

Women's History Month: Saturday, March 6, 2021: Three poems by Heather Schubert

CA

The sea is where I belong.

Where the rocks melt with the sand.

The majestic,

California coastline.

 

Poppy sprinkled cliffs give way to the foam below.

Towering trees border spiraling dirt highways.

Mustards and dandelion greens sprout from under their shade.

Dainty periwinkle wishes whispering on warm breezes.

 

There is a solitude of soul,

Amongst the ragweed and frothy salt slime.

Out here; on the divine,

California coastline.

 © 2021 Heather Schubert

 

 

 

Religion

 

Personality is a complex conglomeration of various tendencies,

Dichotomies in each individual.

Temperamental Gods rage through my veins!

Goddesses ride the mood swings of the artificial hormones this fucked up society has caused my body to crave.

Initiation excites your chakras,

Energies, or some weird fringe of your twisted up subconscious mind.

Causing material chain reactions within you.

 

I will not emulate your deities any longer.

For I am secure in my own right.

This is the fury and wrath of God!

This is the pissed off voice of reason.

 

I have swallowed your pills of religion willingly 

And now I shove my fingers down my own throat.

And force the regurgitation of this myriad of promises

all recurring and changeable

 

Puking up these oaths

along with the bread and salt of your cynical phallocentric secret societies.

Freedom and enlightenment fall on my head

Like a brick -

Of reality.

 

Every symbol contains its opposite

And we are the serpent swallowing his tail

Sucking in his own feces and sustaining his own existence.

Cannibalism tinges the metaphysics of my being

As I lash out at this gaping hole within your systems,

I will not fill it with my soul.

 

This degradation into a dogmatic society

Does not deserve my devotion.

My heart and my sex are sacred.

I will not slash my skin and scream with you.

 

Inspiration is sweeter than the pain of devotion.

I am my own Angel.

My own God.

And my own,

Religion.

 © 2021 Heather Schubert

 

 

 

Survivor

 

Stacked on top of me

I don't have time to breathe,

Chasing friends and losing sleep.

Too much drama,

And second-hand stress.

The wheels of emotion keep turning

On this carousel of crazy.

A maelstrom of nuts and flakes.

Surfing in the eye of a hurricane every day,

I dance naked in the storm.

Chaos is my music;

Disaster, the air in my lungs.

A bloody-jawed eater of civilization,

Goddesses of destruction

Possess me.

Pulled up from the depths,

A survivor.

No one needs to know the rest.

© 2021 Heather Schubert

 

 -

 

Bio

 

Heather G. Schubert is a writer, visual artist, ceremonial magician, teacher and mother of many. Her written work and art have been published both online and in print. She is the editor of The Daughters of Babalon Anthology Series, she writes for Hermietic.com, and does book reviews for Spiral Nature Magazine. Heather studied classic literature, philosophy, psychology, religion, anthropology and early childhood education. Her interests lie specifically in applying the Waldorf and Montessori teachings of the therapeutic aspects of creative play across many scientific disciplines and philosophies as they relate to what cultivates thriving childhood experiences.

Women's History Month: Friday, March 5, 2021: BC Petrakos's poem "That Song No One Sang"

That Song Noone Sang

     

I am woman

I am an object - and it pisses me off

Unless the man is hot

Then I forgot

Any sense I ever knew

 

I am woman

I will give my self away

To any one who will say

The things I want hear

So the tale repeats

Year after year

I am woman

 

And as I age

Unsettled rage

Flows into the corner of my mind

Until I exhaust myself and find

I did it all

It was the choices that I made

Pretence and vain charade

I lost and never saved

How big the fall

 

And now a crone

Dyed hair over the grey

Alive an still afraid

Did I learn?

It’s all a game

And it must be well played

Your body and soul saved

As time is like a candle

Burned

© 2021 BC Petrakos

Bio: B.C. Petrakos is a playwright, author, performance artist, and has the honor t

o have been published in various literary publications. She’s the co-founder of

International Word Bank Publications, and has the privilege to be part of

publishing award-winning poets, nationally, and internationally.