The Untenable by Cynthia Reeser
“The Untenable” by Cynthia Reeser A rusted gash in a frigate’s flank. Her screaming mouth. Rope uncoiling from tree. His tightening grip around her throat. Her pregnancy a hint of a lump. Rotten Easter eggs, unfound in July. His red swollen face, a Goya of anger. Spine of redfish, played like a xylophone. Her head hitting the floor, unconscious. The hot press of the mattress. The thrum and thrum and thrum of...
Body Parts by Margaret Stetler
“Body Parts” by Margaret Stetler Leg lies on the rug like a dog’s gnawed bone. Arm against the bookcase. Foot in its slipper beside the chair. Under table glass, head with blood-matted hair. The house is dark, vulnerable to sky and earth the way the sleeper is to wakeful, watching ones. In the dream I ride with a stunt driver, a man I love. He speeds to the edge of a cliff, has seconds to brake. I count on...
What We Call Love Is Seldom What We Fall Into by Sandy Gillespie
“What We Call Love Is Seldom What We Fall Into” by Sandy Gillespie ____________________ Share your response to this work, in any form, here Sandy Gillespie’s Artist Statement: I am 66. • At 41, I moved alone from San Diego, California, to Fairbanks, Alaska, to get my MFA in poetry. • I learned to backpack. To listen hard for moose and bear. To dress for -‐35 and watch, at midnight, for the...
What Sets Her Apart, Part II By Tania Pryputniewicz
“What Sets Her Apart, Part II” by Tania Pryputniewicz Looking at Käthe Kollwitz, Women and Art, UC Davis In Raped, trampled leaves, vines. Käthe left one bloom intact. Black center tethers one unified petal. Viewer stands at girl’s bare feet, skirt taut over thighs, white flare where naked breasts disintegrate under sun’s sudden path unobstructed...
What Sets Her Apart, Asks Jayne, After Reading Another Guinevere Poem For Me In Massachusetts by Tania Pryputniewicz
“What Sets Her Apart, Asks Jayne, After Reading Another Guinevere Poem For Me In Massachusetts” by Tania Pryputniewicz (Poet to Jayne) The company she keeps: Arthur, his sorcerer sister, their bastard son. Merlin. Her view of the rain stippled Severn, orchard’s apples rinsed silver by dawn, the blue smoke of burning peat. Hair framed by candleflame, cobalt iris of eyes,...
Won’t You Be My Valentine by Elizabeth Hoover
“Won’t You Be My Valentine” by Elizabeth Hoover By now you are just the space my lover touches me around, his care unwittingly conjuring you. You left an opening to talk to me—your voice speckles through—but I miss you when I feel unknowable, a tongue too swollen to tell. My body is a dream I once had of freedom, a foreign thing that eats silver and loves spiders. How can I tell my lover of my craving for...
What We Talk About When We Talk About Father Rucker by Cheryl Buchanan
“What We Talk About When We Talk About Father Rucker” by Cheryl Buchanan Kim says, It’s like I’m still suspended, when Jenny asks her to recite it. Each year it’s harder to believe. Which doesn’t mean they can’t remember. Leigh keeps talking about horses, their wide infantile eyes. Kim brings old photos, where even grown-ups look so starchy, squeaky clean. Like those school uniforms he stuck his hands up...
My Brother by Katharyn Howd Machan
“My Brother” by Katharyn Howd Machan My brother lives in a box of cigars. Each day every day he lifts the lid to peek at the world and hopes the world won’t notice. Bristles grow on his face and throat. He smells, fears soap. He never throws his loose hairs away but carefully keeps them, dirty and dark, in the teeth of a green plastic comb. Long ago he spent years committing incest. I survived but we never...
Tijuana by Holly Norton
“Tijuana” by Holly Norton Southern California unwinds like a filmstrip Unreels when we cross the border in the mint green Edsel Men run into the street to meet my father and me Wave their arms and say, “Senor! Senorita!” He gets out to make a deal Fifty dollars for new upholstery Twenty for a new set of rims He ends with a joke about us getting married They laugh. I look at the ground. On the street I look at...
There Is More Light Every Day (A Song for Uneven Fingernails) by Anna Hundert
“There Is More Light Every Day (A Song for Uneven Fingernails)” by Anna Hundert there is more light every day and it is helping me to see my edges, see where my body ends and the world begins you see, this separation (here I, there world) is needed for the infant mind to grow and I am just learning there is more light in my eyes and on the ends of my eyelashes on days like...
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WAVES ALIVE is an immersive experience, held tenderly by the ebb and flow of ritual, sisterhood, creative expansion, then surfacing to share what we have uncovered about ourselves and our art. Creative sisters are invited to join us at any point and remain for any length of time during our full-circle offering.
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The Deepest Place Jul 26, 2025
