| Wicked Alice poetry journal |
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Sister, Penni Pearson You are the cat’s-eye of thosewho yearn to unfold without yellow oil colors the dawn of every summer-kilned day. For each hue, you read a new book, on another subject. You are a sphinx sunbathing on top of Baldwin spinets, stone eyes squinting at ivory, obsidian tongues you make speak, again—nails quick, sanctified, marking 4/4 time. You are succubi to pliant men, who come to your twin bed in streams, wick away like gloamings’ dew. You are the man who outstays each calendar, striking through every old moon—a fat crayon in hand, staking a cicatrix. He is no one, except a man who accepts you, as a father might, allowing hollyhocks to open as if revolving doors, unescorted yet sidereal, asking no sunshine in return. You are the Gemini woman who summarily orchestrates every black-eyed susan— the moon-faced daisies of her months—within one green urn, questioning how much slower they’ll wane indoors, and who she’ll name each one after, twirling a deaf wand. I am only the seventh sister who darns in swank skylights you envision, listening idly to your plangent violin strain, or to you listening at every other improvident blue door I cannot descend through, cup my mouth to either one, or both, of your good ears . . . swear I’m the one true oracle of your every misadventure. Penni Pearson is an Assistant Professor of English at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota, where she teaches creative writing and other courses. Our House of Cards’ Worship Hour, her first manuscript of poetry, is currently seeking a publisher. The manuscript follows the order of a Protestant worship service, with individual poems functioning as mock liturgy. For example, "Sister" fuctions as the invocation, "Nothing Knits Us" functions as the communion hymn, and "Thanksgiving" functions as the offering. Two poems from the manuscript were selected by Heather McHugh as notable work and were published in Sad Little Breathings and Other Acts of Ventriloquism, an anthology of contemporary American poets. Other poems will be published this fall in a language reader titled Vocabula Bound. She is currently drafting poems for her manuscript-in-progress, Easy in Thy Dove Gray Body, which explores women’s bodies as overwritten texts in relation to postmodern theories of individuality as a cultural effect. |