In the latest issue of Persimmon Tree, Cynthia Hogue curates a suite of poems on “Lament, Rage, and Resistance” focusing on the voices of second wave feminist poets Karen Brennan, Aliki Barnstone, Patricia Spears Jones, Kathleen Winter, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Frances Payne Adler, Monifa Love, Pamela Uschuk, Ronna Magy, Mary Gilliland, and Tess Gallagher. Check out Tess’s exquisite poem.
THE POETS DECIDE TO KEEP THE MOON
Although the general imaginative capacity
might seem to have been plundered by a man
having set foot on the moon, poets decided,
without deciding, to just keep dropping it
into their poems as if nothing much had
happened. They let it shine down on lovers
as an ancient power and, in the bedtime stories
of children, you still had to say goodnight
to it. My part Cherokee mother was alive
at the time this man-step took
place. I remember her black hair falling
to her waist like a horse-hair shawl when
she took it in: “So a man walked on the moon,”
she said. “They have been walking on women
for years and haven’t discovered them. I
think the moon is safe.” She could be severe,
like someone who would leave you to die
on the mountain when your time came. “The moon
carried your great-grandmother out of a river once
when it flooded her bed in the night,” she said.
“She climbed on its back and it floated her
to shore.” Then my mother went back to her
astonishment that while men could walk on the moon
they continued to walk on women, years into
years, moons into moons, without realizing
step into step, they were on sacred
soil, the far off flesh of their birth into death into
birth mothers. We sat silent together
trying to take in such ignorance and star-fall.
Soon it was time for breakfast. The moon
had forgotten us altogether. I shook out some
Cheerios into our bowls, those dependable moons
with holes in the middle that miraculously
float in milk. We took up our spoons
like two planetary insurgents, women
brave enough, every day, for the journey.
You can read all the poems here:
Dear Denise,
Huge thanks for your shout out blog of the Persimmon Tree poetry feature I curated, which includes the poems by Tess Gallagher and Alicia Ostriker! My email is the same, and I'm so pleased to read this poem of yours!
Yours in fellowship.
Cynthia
Posted by: Cynthia Hogue | November 17, 2022 at 10:36 AM