When We Think of Love
What we think, when we think of love: the night out of which young women are plucked; our own nights of solitude; loss, interminable, or its possibility, fuel for the precautions taken; fermentation, yeast loving sugar, dough rising under the floured sheet; the sea loving the shore furiously, wave after percussive wave; whole colonies of plankton loved by gray whales; the trees outside this house love autumn so much they shake with pleasure when it returns; ice loving water until it dissolves completely, like flesh into the earth. What they’ll find centuries hence: the graves, or their...
Read MoreFeatured Works: Week of Feb. 2 (Women)
Dali Woman by Christian Jankowski Wild Violet’s contributors take a look at issues and perspectives of women: In Lyn Lifshin’s poem, “The Pearls,” a necklace serves as a source of meditation on life’s journey. Faith Wappat’s prose poem, “Unsolicited Advice for Quiet Girls with Kind Eyes,” provides wisdom for young women about dealing with men. In Lyn Lifshin’s poem, “Each Night She is Like a Drowning Nymph,” a mythological metaphor speaks of coping and empowerment. Catherine Niedzwiecki’s portrait, “She...
Read MoreMolasses in January
My mother took a drag on a Pall Mall, exhaled, and told the story of my birth. These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ was playing on WJOY, and it was my fourth birthday. She proclaimed, “You were like molasses in January.” We were idling at a red light in a green station wagon on Main Street in Burlington, Vermont. I wasn’t yet familiar with the properties of molasses, but I knew it to be an important ingredient in ginger snaps; it seemed exotic, unlike maple syrup. The youngest, I was always beside her in the kitchen, watching, standing on a chair or peering over the counter, sticking my...
Read MoreEach Night She is Like a Drowning Nymph
like a woman pulled out of the river and dressed in warm clothes, her lips parted. The twist of words that will keep blood flowing thru her body. She could be a woman close to drowning, reeled in with eels and sea weed, fins, like Rapunzel shimmying to freedom, her own hair, her words a rope to...
Read MoreUnsolicited Advice for Quiet Girls with Kind Eyes
after Jeanann Verlee When the boy on the street with his friends, all wearing matching neon-colored wife beaters, tells you that you dress like an old woman, take it as a compliment. When your crush tells you you’re beautiful, do not disagree. Tell him that his girlfriend is too. When your first boyfriend tells you to do something to prove that you love him, leave him. When he gets angry and grabs you as if you are a bar-code that belongs to him, leave him and run. When you come home searching your body for any purity it has left, if any, do not blame yourself. Hug yourself instead....
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