“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 where missing soldier stood up to run.
Girl’s chin to sky, hair strands bled into ground. No reason
to believe she’s dead. My boyfriend cheats on me. I fail
my final. Enroll in Women’s Studies. In an unlit room
a professor who calls herself Merline projects
thirty nine backlit circles bearing portaled flowers, winged
seams. Sappho, Artemisia, Woolf, Merline’s husky voice,
assemble for Last Supper, as we writhe in slick, elated
revulsion. Behind her bedroom door, my twelve-year-old
daughter sleeps. Soon she will rise and enter the now
in which still exist Chicago’s plates, Glastonbury’s Tor.
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Tania Pryputniewicz Artist Statement:
A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Tania Pryputniewicz is a co-founding
blogger for Tarot for Two and Mother Writer Mentor. Saddle Road Press published her
debut poetry collection, November Butterfly, in 2014. Recent poems appeared or are
forthcoming at NonBinary Review, One, Patria Letteratura, and TAB. She lives in San
Diego, California with her husband, three children, a blue-eyed Husky and one portly
house cat named Luna. She can be found online at www.taniapryputniewicz.com
