Embodiment (detail) by Lisa Naas
“Embodiment (detail)” by Lisa Naas “Embodiment (detail),” image by Lisa Naas ____________________ Share your response to this work, in any form, here Lisa Naas Artist Statement: Currently pursuing her PhD in the School of Design at the University of Edinburgh, Lisa holds her MFA in Glass from Edinburgh College of Art (2015). Her research explores the creative process at the intersection of...
At the Yoga Shanti Class for Cancer Survivors by Cheryl Buchanan
“At the Yoga Shanti Class for Cancer Survivors” by Cheryl Buchanan We stand in Mountain Pose, Tadasana, a giant step back with the right. Bend the left leg, left thigh parallel to Mother Earth. We lean, prayer-hands connected. The Sanskrit Yoga gives us “yoke,” of the self and the divine. We look like any class, but for the socks and headwraps, We need to minimize exposure among the diagnosed and staged. Feel...
Crone Hands by Molly Howes
“Crone Hands” by Molly Howes Her large hands bear bony knuckles and uneven, cracked fingernails. An array of rounded patches holds the history of warts. Thin scars line her fingers, the result of working with too much speed and not enough caution. Her hands are functional, not things of beauty. When she was a child, their unloveliness stood out more. By her teens, her hands resembled an ancient witch’s: worn...
The Pink Hairbrush by S.J. Eaves
“The Pink Hairbrush” by S.J. Eaves Wear your hair long and straight and hanging to your waist. Brush your hair one hundred times a night with the pink hairbrush until it glistens like silken dark thread. Let lovers tangle fingers in your hair, whispering words of appreciation, some of them lies. Set your pink hairbrush on your dresser beside your cinnamon scented perfume. Now that your daughter is small,...
My Skin Is Not Enough to Keep Me Warm by Beverly Lafontaine
“My Skin Is Not Enough to Keep Me Warm” by Beverly Lafontaine The sky is thick and heavy with clouds. A neighbor’s dog barks. A yelp from a cartoon., Behind closed eyes I see his body shudder with every bark, A car roars its presence, eager not to be ignored. Never complete silence. In this building, something always whirs, simpers. Walls moan against the weight they’ve borne for years. Water’s ceaseless...
When They Ask About My Face by Nancy Carol Moody
“When They Ask About My Face” by Nancy Carol Moody I will say something about snow, the skittered tracks of a hare just prior to the hush I will say wind bores salt into sea-boards, taut rope burns a furrow, leaf rust in spring autumns elms Hoarfrost bit by hob nail meadow after the scythe the dory’s barnacled hull a peppermint held too long against the palate When they ask about my face, I will say...
The Tattoo I Did Not Get by Felicia Mitchell
“The Tattoo I Did Not Get” by Felicia Mitchell Bloodroot sends up leaves, angel wings on earthen flesh. A flower comes next. My right breast, hollow, is the opposite of spring. It has bloomed and gone. I look for flowers that grow on the sides of trails, my path a journey. My left breast likes sun, flesh flushing as winter wanes. Its nipple blossoms. Where the sun falls first, a bloodroot will bloom early,...
After the Cut by Mai-Lon Gittelsohn
“After the Cut” by Mai-Lon Gittelsohn I take a shower differently now I used to stand under the shower head a font of water splashing down my back coursing over my breasts now I sit on a shower bench hold a hose in my hand let it spray over my flat chest inscribed now with scars I let the water spray against the pits of my arms prickles teasing numb skin after the cut, what? ____________________ Share...
Daughter, They’ll Use Even Your Own Gaze to Wound You by Beth Ann Fennelly
“Daughter, They’ll Use Even Your Own Gaze to Wound You” by Beth Ann Fennelly 1. Chicago, IL My high school teacher loved that I loved libraries, so she promised she’d bring me to her alma mater’s. One Saturday, we took the train in and she donned white gloves to turn manuscript pages while I roamed the stacks, inhaling that dear dusty library funk. Wait: did I hear footsteps? When I was sure I’d been...
Small Talk at Evanston General by Beth Ann Fennelly
“Small Talk at Evanston General” by Beth Ann Fennelly And what is it you do? he asked, after a moment of silence. My mother was in the bathroom exchanging her dress for the cotton gown. I had the sense that he was asking to fulfill some kind of med school training: Engage the patient’s loved ones in conversation. Five outlandish occupations pinged through my head, all lies. But I knew I shouldn’t mess with...
When You’ve Been Sick for a Time by Susan Austin
“When You’ve Been Sick for a Time” by Susan Austin The surgeon threaded the catheter through my superior vena cava, let it dangle just above my heart. The young assistant scrubbed until I felt like pudding— Strange not to feel pain, only meaty burrowing. Sometimes the catheter rubs and my heart hiccups. When you’ve been sick for a time you give up all your secrets, you give up lies. I liked building puzzles...
Stef’s Request By Abigail Licad
“Stef’s Request” by Abigail Licad The night before the surgery she hands me her Nikon and asks me to photograph her naked hips and thighs — the only parts of her body left unscarred by the accident. In a trailer transporting horses from her mother’s farm, her beautiful twenty-two year-old body snatched by the collision’s conflagration, third-degree burns across seventy-percent of her skin, a permanent...
Leap by Susan Austin
“Leap” by Susan Austin Wind roars home after a windless winter. I listen to its long-haul howl, wonder how spring birds weather a force that tips thin-rooted aspen, rattles windows in their casings, doors in their jams, as if the wind is an intruder, or someone lost, or someone lonely. For a time I lived in a homestead cabin built by two brothers from St. Joe: craftsmen, bakers, one a fiddler who snowshoed...
Lupus Outwits Me, Declares Martial Law by Susan Eisenberg
“Lupus Outwits Me, Declares Martial Law” by Susan Eisenberg Who would dream to awaken from fevered sleep stun-gunned into paralysis by their own ruthless doppelganger: power stations overtaken in a pre-dawn coup; from every organ of the body a triumphant, unfamiliar flag! Who wouldn’t be humbled by their double’s brazen brilliance? Or, begin at once to plot in whispers the first frantic steps of resistance?...
Inside Frida Kahlo’s Body by Mercedes Lawry
“Inside Frida Kahlo’s Body” by Mercedes Lawry Wildfires are burning, children are returning to the womb and birds are having their wings plucked slowly, feather by feather, keeping silent. The old rich men would never understand. Shadows will eclipse the heart but something else is missing. Pain is a career and the interpretation fills canvas after canvas. Love is an echo of that pain. Where does she put it...
Sooner or Later the Body Betrays Us by Beverly Lafontaine
“Sooner or Later the Body Betrays Us” by Beverly Lafontaine The knock comes in the middle of the night. Though it has no echo, I search the outlines of chairs and tables,...
Bet You Thought You Saw the Last of Me by Rachel Durs
“Bet You Thought You Saw the Last of Me” by Rachel Durs I used to think that I hated the person I was. I used to think that I left her to die and became someone so much better, But now I know I reached into the past and grabbed her out of there And left all her hang-ups behind. Now I know I didn’t become me by ousting her, but that together we’re the hero of this story – She just happens to...
How Big the Sky by Anna Hundert
“How Big the Sky” by Anna Hundert 1. he steals my darkest lipstick, the one I never wear, and holds me tightly from behind although I do not struggle, I shake as a steady hand writes his name across my back in my darkest lipstick, the one I never wear, which isn’t very dark but dark enough to look like blood. I push him away and then let him draw me close again and then wonder if this has happened to every...
The Distance Between by Maureen McQuerry
“The Distance Between” by Maureen McQuerry You tell me to lean into sorrow as a horse leans against a fence, day after day, believing in time his weight will topple it, like a child leans into her mother, forehead to breastbone, the twin press of despair and hope. Tonight the air is charged with wanting, electric blue. The distance between a question and answer is a skitter of light, the long ache from gravid...
Not Always by Denise Miller
“Not Always” by Denise Miller Remember stones skipped across man-made lake. Remember tall grass browned by sunlight. Remember bouldered footsteps against linoleum. Remember town— city’s antithesis. Remember the bodies of buildings only one story high balanced on basements taller than their skeletons above ground. Remember rock and stone and wood. Remember aluminum and that streetlight bouncing off it like a...
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