✨ 5 Poems by Women, About Women
Stoplights. Niagra Falls. Walls & Willows. Even Harry Potter?
We’re celebrating almost twelve years of daily poem deliveries at Every Day Poems, and as part of that celebration we’re highlighting some of what’s been published and enjoyed in the past. So many poems to choose from!
In honor of Women’s History month, here are five poems by women, about women, that have appeared in Every Day Poems…
1
The Woman at the Stoplight
I see in her face
that oh, she needs it too—
a gap in the day,
cloistered though not
confining,
person-
sized pocket to slip into,
buffered as by a cloud’s
sheer inner lining,
for a breath
of self-replenishment,
self-repair,
or only just
a breath,
(stanza break)
and then
(I promise!)
out again,
far from too much
to ask,
so with the full force
of my small ferocity,
I importune the air:
”What would it cost
you who are only
lavish, seamless,
great incorporeal sprawl
of everywhere?—
open!
And admit us.”
— Claire Bateman, author of Locals
2
woman, listening
like a great sea mirroring
cloud and moon and willow
some mornings stand lovely
and idle
first words a whisper
from the earth—
there are certain fields ripe for cutting
— Robin Turner, a found poem from The Good Earth
(first appeared in SWWIM)
3
She Wants
She wants to open the space, to knock down a wall or two—she
envisions tall windows and golden light over hardwood floors, a breeze
that lifts gauzy panels, the atmosphere's quiet hum to hold her.
She wants the essential to remain: an empty matchbox, a blue marble,
the memory of her child who is now a woman. Morning asana with her
head bowed low, or arms outstretched in tree pose. Daybreak.
— Michelle Ortega, a prose poem from Don’t Ask Why
4
Initiation
Sealed in my barrel,
with an anvil clamped beneath my feet,
I sailed upright,
listened for Holleran’s tap—
twice on the lid staves
—then they cut me loose.
I rode low, scraped the bottom stones,
clipped a rock, caught the current.
In a moment I was at the brink,
thudding on the cusp—
pitching forward, breathless, blind—
from a womb
of my own making.
Niagra!—over me!—under me!—
I spilled into it from every pore,
lost myself
in the blackness of its roar.
Something opened—grew wide—tore—
till every part of me was new:
Brain. Eyes. Tongue
—down to the wet soles in my shoes.
I took my measure, checked my sex
and, pleased with what I’d made,
I slapped my back between the blades
and took a breath
of consciousness.
— Joan Murray, from Swimming For the Ark
5
Who Am I?
“Let’s go for a walk,”
she’d say, and then my mother
would circle the block. I’d question
why we couldn’t go farther. My body
could handle it. But Merry
Nell’s couldn’t. She needed a horcrux
or, perhaps, more than one horcrux.
To figure that out, she’d need a longer walk—
through the neighborhood. She’d be merry,
as she always was. I am a mother
who likes to push her body.
There’s no question
about it. But every day I question
why I am her horcrux.
Why everybody
seems to think that I am walking her walk,
that I am mothering like my mother.
It’s true. My name is also Merry,
and I also chose to marry
at 21. That is not the question.
I need to know how to mother
without one. All I have is a horcrux,
one I bring with me each morning I take a walk:
my own body.
But it’s acting strangely, my body.
It’s giving me signs, as yours did, Merry
Nell. Oh, it still can walk
up actual mountains. But I do question
because it doesn’t feel like mine. It feels like a horcrux.
I feel like I am you, my dear, dead mother.
And I’m not, am I? Holy Mary, mother
of God. Pray. You’re not here in body.
Neither is my mom. She’s only a horcrux.
She wasn’t into you, Mary.
She didn’t even have a question
about you. Not even when she couldn’t walk.
Like Harry, I am the horcrux. I am not my mother.
I can still walk, and I still dwell in this body.
But I am Merry Megan. No question.
— Megan Willome, a sestina poem from the author of The Joy of Poetry
Featured photo by Dave Hoefler, via Unsplash.