“Woman Waiting” by Antonia Clark
She ignores clocks and calendars,
lets time slip through her fingers.
One summer, she ran barefoot
all the way to Hartland, a love note
clutched in her fist, her hair like fire
taken by wind, a thin cotton skirt
clinging to her bare legs. So easy,
then, to question perfect strangers
about birth, blood, to keep faith
with her own body’s deep secrets.
Now, she smooths a polyester
housedress over her soft belly,
drags a comb through coarse
white hair without needing a mirror.
She holds the future in her mouth,
a pill hidden under her tongue,
and refuses to swallow.
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Antonia Clark Artist Statement:
Antonia Clark, a medical writer and editor, has also taught poetry and fiction
writing and is co-administrator of an online poetry forum, The Waters. She is the
author of a poetry chapbook, Smoke and Mirrors (Finishing Line Press, 2013) and
a full-length poetry collection, Chameleon Moon (David Robert Books, 2014). Her
poems and short stories have appeared in numerous print and online journals,
including Anderbo, The Cortland Review, Eclectica, The Missouri Review, The
Pedestal Magazine, Rattle, and Softblow. Toni lives in Vermont, loves French
picnics, and plays French café music on a sparkly purple accordion. “I write for
the joy of it, even when it’s hard. But more and more, it seems to me that all
meaning resides in relationships — how this is like that. I write to connect one
notion to another, one day to the next, tangible to intangible, the living to the
dead.”
