Women’s Work by Jude Rittenhouse
“Women’s Work” by Jude Rittenhouse I am ironing. Mother said that, when I was a baby, I watched her iron. Hour after hour. In the 1950’s, women pressed dresses, napkins, stacks of men’s white shirts, even sheets. My eyes followed her hands, back and forth, endlessly smoothing life’s wrinkles and creases. All of my adult life, I have hated ironing. Now, I am ironing. Another woman friend has learned: cancer....
Psalm of Fire and Water by Cristina Baptista
“Psalm of Fire and Water” by Cristina Baptista “[Christ’s] mother gave birth to him without ever having loved. She wasn’t a woman: she was a suitcase.”...
Call by Alla Bozarth
“Call” by Alla Bozarth Inspired by “Mountain Moving Day,” 1911, by the Japanese Feminist Poet, Yosano Akiko. There is a new sound of roaring voices in the deep and light-shattered rushes in the heavens. The mountains are coming alive, the fire-kindled mountains, moving again to reshape the earth. It is we sleeping women, waking up in a darkened world, cutting the chains from off our...
Stone Love by Joanna Clapps Herman
“Stone Love” by Joanna Clapps Herman I search the river bed Feeling for stones Use only my toes Curl my distal digits around Pick them up with these unhands Carry them with me A punishment For grief that, Unworded cannot find tears. This grief knows nothing Recognizes nothing Claims nothing Is mute I long for tears, but I am uncreatured A dull stone. ____________________ Share your response to this...
Next to You, Permanence by Elizabeth Jacobson
“Next to You, Permanence” by Elizabeth Jacobson I wrapped the corpse of a juvenile bull snake I found on the road around a slender branch of a young aspen tree, coiling it into three even loops. The fluid from the snake’s body collected in its head, which swelled to many times its normal size. The next day, flies covered the body so thickly I could not tell a snake was what they clung to. On the third day,...
Does the sea remember everything? I wonder.
Does she absorb everything? Does she keep it safe?
Virginia Woolf
. . .
The Q: Can you fathom the spectacle that would be created if we moved together, arms outstretched, close enough to touch?
The Q: What echoes through you that longs to take form—a poem, an image, a mark, a whisper of becoming?
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fathoms Feb 28, 2026 -
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