Celebrating women, Journey to the Crone, a collection of 108 poems by 80 women explores the theme of maiden, mother and crone. It highlights the many personal aspects of womanhood and offers fresh and thought provoking perspectives on what it means to be female.
Medusa’s Face
I am civilized now: the menses stopped.
No sacred blood stains my passage,
no Pegasus born from my pain.
Promises made for tomorrow have arrived –
not yet filled, but neither broken
and my eyes that see your future cannot see mine.
Yesterdays rustle at the edges of my mind:
a white mist
the sea —
days purple as plums
that once grew in my family’s orchard.
How many days are left to me?
Queen to Black Night Four
Feeding each other morsels of bitterness,
rage sustained us – compressing our bones,
leaking green jeweled drops
across sheets strewn with flowers –
while our lips, between kisses,
molded theories displacing despair in the world,
never owning it as ours.
Rage grew our black hedge of bracken,
thorned vines wrapped castle walls.
Twined inside, we did not mend the cracking,
did not believe block shifting block
could shatter foundations,
and topple the lodestone of love.
janetsunderland.com 