Crone Line

by Rhonda Nichols

I crossed the crone line like a winner

arms raised and panting

It’s where I got my second wind

and made my way more slowly

stopping often to inspect the words I had chosen

and the lives they touched

Heart pounding in a rhythm

comfortably familiar

I am alive!

I am well

and nothing beats that!

I crossed the crone line

without knowing how much it would mean to me

Skin worn well

more freckled in sunshine

Grasping the help of women

already over the line

My need for reassurance about how I’m doing

lessened by a cease from striving

I can lay down with the wolf now

Rest on her furry flank

Feed with her nourishing bits of vermin

caught before they get to me

I crossed the crone line and love the view

An Abundance of Cilantro

by Ahuva Zaslavsky

For a little girl

who grew up 

not in nature  

a bunch of 

cilantro growing

wildly on the

edge of the

small grove by 

her building 

peaking from a crease 

on the side walk. 

What a relief was this

break in the concrete.

What an opportunity to

fulfill its potential. 

For a little girl

it was like

coming out of 

the other side of the pool after a very long, long dive with

eyes shut

filling her lungs with

steaming air

on a hot summer day. 

For a little girl 

that’s how

the cilantro bunch came out

so unexpected 

so misplaced 

like a clown pulling out 

a fake bouquet 

from a handkerchief. 

For this little girl it was abundance.

Showing Up

by Cindy Brodner

During this period of isolation

I've grown fonder of my surroundings.

I miss my friends and colleagues,

yet, I find their essence everywhere I look.

The giant Sequoia, with her spongy bark,

loyal, stalwart, not asking for much, 

emanating such love.

Roses, feminine and fluffy, 

bless me with their beauty and flowery fragrance.

The hummingbird cheerily cheeping,

while performing a high wire hopscotch dance,

killing me with delight.

Mrs. Squirrel gaily chatting,

bringing the news of the day.

"Did you know the crows are stalking the wren's nest?

You really ought to be more vigilant!

Well, gotta go!"

Friends all around,

bringing comfort, joy and companionship.

All I have to do, 

is show up.

Salt Water

by Nancy Drury

I need to dive into warm salt water

I need to move under the pulsating waves

coming up for a deep breath

then rolling onto my back

letting the water carry me.

No thoughts, no fear

floating with my arms and legs

splayed like a star fish.

Now turning again into the surf’

I ride the long rolling wave

pushed hard and fast

tumbling in the salt water

until I feel the rippled sand

under my feet.

I stand and shake the water

out of my eyes, catching my breath.

And push against the waves in the shallows

as I walk out again to greet the next wave

to carry me home.

Hearing only my own heart beat in my ears

salt water on my lips

I am alone in my joy.

Puppy Dogs

by Kate Utt

Long legged men,

Tall in an awe

Shucks sort of way.

I am a sucker, gets me

Every time. Twenty years younger,

Seven years older, all fine with me.

The way they cross their legs,

Or sprawl them, long spilling            

Over the end of a chair.

Accompanied by big puppy

Dog feet. My friend

Married a short legged

Man.

Observes as I flirt with a long

Legged waiter, I’ve never seen

you flirt like this.

Well did you see those long

Blue jean legs? Didn’t notice

she replies. I think she must be dead.

Eternal Questions

by Tanja K Lux

The scent of my body

can be pungent

after an elongated day

quarantined

with angry edges

and forgotten deodorant.

In the evening,

I surrender and

absentmindedly,

fold my cotton shirt

and return it

to its place

in the drawer.

Only

to be rudely awakened

by yet another

elongated day

in quarantine.

Another morning

for a cotton shirt.

I retrieve the one

from the drawer

and notice

the scent of my body.

With disgust and flair

I slam the shirt down

into my dirty clothes bin.

.

How did it get there?

How did I get here?

Where have I been?

The scent of my body

can be mysterious

after moments touching

my legs, my arms,

my backside, my inside.

Where am I going?

How can I be forgiven?

The Miracle

By Bernadette Fagan

Set it down in a new place
Everything you were and are
Challenge yourself to remember way back when
When you were running wild in the country of the farm
Barefoot and wide eyed
Scared to stop and listen
For fear of being misunderstood
Looking this way and that for approval
Matched thinking
So you could feel safe
Take it all and remember
And set it down in a new place
It will look different there
Lovely and shiny
And brilliant in color
Fresh and new
Not easy to recognize
It will be a miracle
And both will be real...

Dissociation

by Amber Rose Lewis 

with credit to Nancy Lane for the initial idea.

“There are two of us housed in this body,” said I to Myself, 

and we agreed.

“Shall we walk or pull some weeds?” we asked each other. We settled on a game of croquet, missing, mostly, the yellow daffodils that bent in the spotty sun.

At dinnertime the conversation lulled, both immersed in thoughts of their own.

The door knocking interrupted, and they got up to answer it. NoOne stood there and they invited her in. Only the dent in the sofa cushion gave evidence of her lasting impression.

Soon they and NoOne were laughing, and eating ice cream made from the house warming gift since no island store existed. She poured thick rich chocolate over it, remembering the insult by the mainland town shop-keeper about the large bottle size.

“One can never have enough chocolate,” she said to him. He rolled his eyes.

But the ice cream smothered in chocolate was good. They and NoOne licked their lips, not needing a pet dog to lap up the last drops.

In sugar-loaded hysteria, they mused at the opening moon, the one that peaked from the distant Cascades, across the strait, to later show her reflection on the Salish Sea.

They and NoOne oohed and awed and clapped. Dot Rock, in the distance, clapped back, filled with seals who appreciate much the same.

So, I and Myself walked NoOne to the door to say goodnight.

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” NoOne replied, and we shut the door behind her.

We looked at each other, “That was nice.”

“It was,” and the conversation lapsed again.

Another knock came, so late and dark. It was Nothing and they let her in.

She sat in the chair, cushion deep with weight.

“Would you like some ice cream?”

“Oh yes,” Nothing answered.

They and Nothing poured loads and loads of chocolate onto their sweet cream.

Lips smacked, sighs of satisfaction rang out and it was time for Nothing to go.

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Nothing answered, and once again I and Myself stood side by side.

One burped and laughed and the other did the same. Together they went out into the night air to watch the stars. In the distance they heard the seals clap.

Menopause

by Birch Dwyer

When my fire goes out

I don’t have to be afraid. 

Because I know

how to build one.

How to stack little sticks

into a teepee, how to stuff 

tender grass inside to nurture

a flame.  How to build

a good solid fire by growing it

slowly, and turning the driest,

raggedy parts towards the flame,

making sure there is plenty

of room for the fire to breathe

so the flames can stretch,

lick and crackle. 

I know how to build

a fire from last night’s leftovers.

I know how to build a fire

after a night of rain. I can feel the badge

of this now from the inside out,

as if my feet grew a pair of boots

in the making and my legs ached well

from my search for kindling.

This place where I live…

by Rhonda Nichols

Leaves falling like golden raindrops

Big, steady as his arms that hold me

Warm, devoted, tender

Like winter fires we huddle around

Gravel ribbon from the street

Shaded by tall arbor vitae

Green shutters nestled beyond

The grove of fifty year old cedars, redwoods and firs

We gather in her body

A basement is her waist

Open to daylight and a small pond with lotus and iris

It’s where bees and cats come to drink

Beside her a small offspring

Birthed and built by the kindness of siblings

Where mom finds refuge from what we are not

Pasture enclosed for lambs that prosper in summer

And the feathered bodies of various hens

Who know where to go at night

A place where peace descends

When men of construction cease from their labors at five

Small white bodies eager for food and acceptance

Greet the opening front door less often now

Preferring to sleep like aging souls

Bent on returning to the spirit world

This is the place that chose us

And we accepted eight years ago

Mt Hood

by Rhonda Nichols

Adorned like a bride on her day

I was struck by her stunning presence 

as I crossed the Marquam

Covered in white after a long dry summer

She called to me, a faraway sister needing my attention

I think of the water stashed on her slopes

Held there for the thirsty who depend on her giving

And those of us who look to her for wisdom and certainty

She’s seen the growth of a city at her feet

How humans can change a place

I hope she doesn’t mind me staring

It’s just that sunny skies in winter are uncommon

And her beauty is better witnessed by the naked eye

Than all the photos from days past

Write a letter…

by Rhonda Nichols 

You used to send your words on kangaroo stationary.  Pages and pages to make the journey across the ocean worth the stamp.  We were young then.  Every month I looked forward to news of your summer in the middle of my winter or vice versa.  Each letter saved took longer to come as the years slipped by.  But your apology was the same.  “Sorry it took so long for me to write.”  Eventually you came to the US again.  You met me in Dallas where you thought I’d gone wild out on my own.  I remember the Midnight Oil concert, sweaty and loud.  It changed how you thought of me.

But I met you again in South Australia, our husbands meeting for the first time.  We talked about getting pregnant.  Then returning when Chantelle and Carmella were toddlers.  I have pictures that witness those were the best days we had.  Now I keep your letters in a file.  Words of history that no longer have meaning.  I see you occasionally on Instagram.  A reminder of the girl I once knew and not the woman you became.

The Fence

by Ahuva s. Zaslavsky

Sitting on a fence

Is a good defense

It’s a great position

To not get attention

To not make decisions

Not show affection

You can be the guard

Of many back yards

You can be above, like a dove

You can get higher

To stay away from fire

Up there you can be far from the ground

Tune out from all sounds

You can’t be touched so much

The smell? It won’t be like from hell

Everything looks so small, you can feel tall

But what about the flavor?

Do me a favor -

If you stay on the fence

You don’t get the chance

by Ahuva s. Zaslavsky

Yesterday I realized for the first time that what I thought I had been doing only in the last few years, I had actually been doing my whole life. And it felt so good.

It didn’t always feel good. In fact, I was afraid to call myself an artist. Every time I said it out loud or even just to myself, I felt like a fraud.

Yesterday I realized it is all real. I am a real artist. But not only that. I was one my whole life. Even though I never got a proper, formal art education and have no diploma, I was always working as a full-time artist. I can proudly announce - I have 43 years of experience. 

To become an artist you don’t have to be born with it. You don’t need to have a talent or potential, as so many professionals told me throughout my life. To become an artist, all you have to do is look. Always keep your eyes on the world. Oh boy, how much I have looked. I looked everywhere because I had no choice. I had to learn. 

My eyes were, and still, are always looking, searching, learning, copying, following, investigating, inventing, imagining. That’s what makes me an artist!

Yesterday I was kind enough to also look inside and admit - I am an artist. And it felt so good.

Listen
By Sandi Goodwin

Listen to the calling;
listen to the hymns that play within,
the tinkling crystal,
the metallic ringing,
the resonant thunk of wood on wood.
The cascading trickle of shining liquid,
the vibrating trill of air pushed through narrow spaces,
the quivering of long thin threads,
of pulsing blood rush,
drumming heart.

Remember, physical body,
that heart can talk to heart at any time, and that
the heavy clothing over the soul is unnecessary for the most necessary of connections.

Renewal
By Sandi Goodwin

I am my most happy, free self when I have an expanse of road before me, wide vistas beside me, the unknown around each bend and past the vanishing point on the horizon. The thrill that feels like carbonation tickles my skin, my heart, and my mind. Every structure of my body hums and vibrates. I feel limitless, like the expanding universe itself, shattering previous edges and occupying new space now, now, and in every other now that follows. Every turn of my car’s wheels is a jailbreak from monotony and sameness. The destination is irrelevant; it is the humming of the engine, the playing of music or audiobook, the hurtling through space that is the point, the outrunning of perceived problems or circumstances too long tolerated. I am incubating new possibilities as a hen incubates an egg, listening to the smallest peep or peck, allowing it to mature into the boldness and strength that it takes to tap its way out of the calcified cage and crawl out into to the light. My awareness will satellite this newly hatched self as it grows beyond old limits, similar to the old self, but fresh and sweet as new grass.

I walk with the poet around her still pond, early, even before the crows appear.  We move down the long path, breaking the skim of ice in the frost.  We move past the trees laden with moss; they likely have no memory of bare arms, chilled and frozen, reaching for the high slate sky.   Be brave, the poet tells me, which means be exactly who I am, without shame, without apology.  If a crow can be its raucous self, telling all the world its joys and complaints, if it can answer the world with sharp black eyes, who am I to silence my more hesitant self?  This is why we write? I ask the poet and she replies well yes, but truly this is why we breathe.

Rivers were always sacred for you.  You would not have used that word, sacred, to describe something filled with joy, in this case trout fishing.  Your wife was gone with the century’s turning more than a hundred years ago, and she who owned the word “sacred” held it tight in the steely grasp of one hand on her little prayer book, her other clutching a handkerchief and a vapor of laudanum.  Silent journeys crept between you.  Where was a simple fisher of trout to go amongst all those fishers of men?  And her fervent faith, how it rose like steam all one winter, so hot she must have burned her fierce fury into your guilt, your desire to flee the perfection of glory before it consumed you.  So you found your mistress in rivers of cold icy water, in the sun and silence of streams, in the current of a moving faith:  hers with her solace in the hereafter, you with yours on the muddy shores of grace.

I love hiking with a camera, especially if I am awake enough to the day that I let the camera dangle from my hand and capture what I’m seeing not with aperture and light but with my senses: the tang of air and mist on my skin, the aromatic smell of blackberry vines changing from blossom to berry, the tart taste of dripping rain in the air.  And what I see is sacred, and what I hear is even holy, the rush of wind and river and the startled flutter of wings and bird cries overhead.  I know as a human I can walk in so much richness it is easily lost on me.  I also know if I just keep following the path even as it turns out of sight I am pulling myself into the moment, scrambling across roots and fallen logs and stones and pinecones, feeling the soft cushion of pine needles whose crushed essence fills the air.  I am moving; I am still; I am for moments inside something that feels like infinity, like belonging

20 Things You Most Likely Haven’t Heard About My Apartment by B Bello

1. My apartment is so teeny-tiny that it is hard for me to fathom how twenty things of any significance could even fit inside.

2. There are way more than twenty significant things inside of my apartment.

3. When my mother found out the address and drove by, rumor has it that she went home and cried. Because of the motels across the street and the street itself and because of what she saw of the outside of the apartment.

4. My mother has been inside my apartment two times. One for each year that we’ve lived here.

5. We have upwards of seven types of hot sauce in our minuscule kitchen.

6. Upwards of eight cast iron skillets.

7. Six cutting boards.

8. An excessive amount of chopsticks and not a single wine glass.

9. There are no dogs allowed in our apartment. Even though our landlord loves dogs and has two herself...

10. Seems kind of messed up if you ask me.  

11. I never. Ever. Hear the neighbor whose apartment shares one wall with our apartment. It is probably just a very thick wall, but sometimes I worry that she’s a ghost. Or, spookier, that she’s simply very quiet and can hear our every word and movement quite clearly.

12. We’ve had friends over for dinner a mere five times in this apartment.

13. I can count off on my fingers the number of times that I have been to the Taco Bell across the street from my apartment. I think this is an accomplishment, though I wish I could say I only needed one hand.

14. This one time, some dude screamed himself hoarse right outside. He banged on the windows and circled the building and we turned off all the lights and locked the doors until he wandered away.  

15. I could break into that apartment in under three minutes.

16. I was very skilled at locking myself out.

17. We got married while we were living in that apartment.

18. There was some kind of safety mechanism on the faucet of the tub that never let the water get above luke warm.

19. It was really affordable.

20. We had a puppy in that apartment for a week and a half before we moved. Don’t tell anybody.

Firsts by B Bello

I’m twenty-one and in London, studying abroad. Apparently he’s travelling the world, “studying life.” An unplaceable accent and barely-there smile stop me from laughing in his face at that line. But no actually he’s got plans to be a DJ or something.

Wearing worn out tennis shoes at an overpriced bar, he has appealing dreadlocks, a green track jacket, and no place to stay that night (though that last one doesn’t come up until later). We’re both half Nigerian. I want to say his name is Tony. The kiss is straight up asked for, denied, and then later gifted unexpectedly. Stolen? The same whiskey gingers that fuel the evening make it difficult to remember specifics.

Everything is closed and there’s a lone suitcase sitting outside one of the stores that sells suitcases. I steal it for no reason on our way back to my flat where I shatter a glass and have second thoughts— first thoughts really. I had hit my head falling from the monkey bars on that playground where we sat overlapped in a tire swing and swapped stories about lucid dreaming and who knows what else.

It’s on the cheek and two hours too late. I sloppily mumble something about how I don’t think my program actually allows overnight guests as I usher him downstairs, still in his socks, handing him his sneakers as I close the gate.

My queen has a torrent of bright orange blossoms flooding out of her heart
orange like the rind of fresh citrus
shockingly orange
so it makes you stop and take notice
she is not surprised by her own brilliance
though sometimes it overtakes her

I am not one for palaces or crowns
I am not so much drawn to the heaviness of jewels and stones
but more to the lightness of water
her strength has buoyancy to it
that is part of her magnetism
I know she is close by
when I am floating in solitude
and a few of her warm petals
wash up on my shores

I know that the color of my power
is revealed in the tides of my heart
I allow brilliance to enter me in the darkness.

My Queen swims from heart to lungs

                out through the songs  

                sung by ancestors’ mothers’ mothers

She inhales fern spores into her heart

                where she swirls them in her caldron

                brimming with the frankincense, lavender, myrrh poultice

                spreading through cell walls,      

                radiating her beauty like the skin of red bartlett pear

My Sovereign Queen is unadorned,

                for she relishes her softness

                as bounty after rain soaks the hills in spring

                feeling stretch of sinews

                of her thighs from birthing ideas,

                her breasts wet with nurturing,

                her arms bulging from carrying them

                until they are ripe enough to

                thrive on their own

She is naked except the small emerald stone

                hanging on a chain between her breasts

She moves from heart to womb

                cell to cell

                creation to death

Embodying her throne

What is realm?

And even more than realm--

Belonging?

I am like that black calf who

with all the vast grange arrayed

behind her

presses her nose

against the fence.

Whence these limits?

The scent of wild sage contains

the sum of my power:

it roams on air

then settles in the dust.

Or,

the total of my nobility

in this haphazard stack of hives,

neglect of a lazy beekeeper.

Here--my reign:

an old crow

tugging at roadkill

the truck bearing down.

I hold the road

rising

between two rivers:

There  is no realm

more than the waterfall

pouring itself without cease,

no belonging more

than the falling rock.

June, 2016

By Allie Hein

Sadie

My name is Sadie.  It hasn’t always been Sadie, but now it is. The name my parents gave me, well, I’m not going to tell you that because then you’d see me in a different way, and I only want you to see me now, not make guesses about me based on my old name.  It wasn’t really my name anyway, see. My parents gave it to me and the way the story goes, they had a big fight about it, and my dad stormed out of the hospital, and my mom named me before he could get back and interfere. So, my name is Sadie and that’s the end of it.  I chose it, gave it to myself as a gift, all wrapped up in legal papers, and signed by a judge. So Sadie really is my name, and the way I found out is that one day I went to the library and I took out one of those baby name books. It was called 500 names for girls, and I opened the book and I started with the A’s and I stood up tall and looked at myself in the mirror and I tried out each name one at a time.  It took me 6 weeks, and by the time I got to the S’s I was starting to lose hope. What if I couldn’t find my real name, and I got to the Z’s and nothing really fit? I know there’s probably other books, but I don’t know if I could’ve faced starting with the A’s again in another book. But then, there it was. Sadie. Isn’t it a pretty name? It just fits me perfectly don’t you think?

I didn’t have a normal girlhood, because nobody knew I was a girl. I knew, of course, and I don’t think I was the only one. I think my brother Ned knew too.  Ned’s dead now, died of AIDS in ’95. Those were the early days, before AZT even, and I miss him all the time. I think he really saw who I am, who I was, but in general, my girlhood was my secret. I had a best girlfriend, her name was Karen, and that was very ok because everyone thought that we were boyfriend and girlfriend, and after raising my gay brother, my parents were relieved to have a child behaving the way the neighbors would expect. But I knew that we were girlfriends, and she was so kind to me, never objecting to my wanting to braid her hair, or asking her to try on 6 different outfits for me before we went to the movies.  Maybe it was better in some ways, because I never would have fit in with the girls in my town, and because they thought I was a boy, I was already a kind of alien, so my odd ways didn’t make so much of a difference to them.  It’s also true that Karen was my shield. We could just sit together and talk and laugh, the way you do with a girlfriend, and it always felt so natural.

Tanya

I always said that if a man hit me, that would be it. I’d leave him, and no waiting around to decide, or to hear him apologize, no accepting gifts, or make-up sex. None of that for me. I’ve seen down that road, and I know where it takes you, and I told myself I’m not going there, not ever.  But that was before the time it really happened, and I knew, really knew that when he apologized, he really did mean it. That when I ran out of the apartment, and down into the basement, and he ran after me saying, “I’m sorry, that was wrong, I’ll never do that again, I didn’t even mean to do it this time” I could believe him. I knew he’d been looking and looking for work, and finding nothing, and both his fancy college degree, and his parent’s money didn’t seem to be helping him to get the kind of respect he deserved.  And he did deserve it. He was smart, a poet, and he never met a situation that couldn’t be improved with a pun.  So when he ran after me, into the basement and he grabbed my arm and tears ran down his face and he pleaded “forgive me, please forgive me” I, still stunned, as much from the fact of the blow as from the blow itself, said “Yes.” Of course, I understand, you didn’t mean to, it was just so many things converging all at once and I happened to say, do, that one more thing that was too much, the tipping point and his hand flew off of his too much to handle, and crashed against my face and he really, really was so sorry. So I went back up the four flights of stairs, slowing as we got closer to the door, and I felt my heart beating hard, from exertion, or maybe from defeat, thinking, it was just this one time, it’ll never happen again, thinking, if this could happen once, it could happen again, thinking, I can’t think about this, I’ll forget, and never think about this, again. It’ll never happen if I just don’t think about it, it never happened. I can stay.

Elizabeth

I can’t explain the mess I was born into. They are such hippy, groovy weirdos, and they think everything is always so fine, and everyone should just accept each other, but they are so wrong! There are some things that are normal, and you know they’re normal because that’s what everyone does, and it’s not as if you have to decide about these things. What’s normal just IS.  I always knew that once I got done with high school I’d get away from this sucky weirdness and be a normal person. Lots of my friends can’t stand their parents, and couldn’t wait to get away, but that was for normal reasons - like they weren’t allowed to date, or they couldn’t drive the car. Me, I couldn’t wait to get away so that I could have the kind of organized, normal life my parents deprived me of. I just want to be in the kind of family where there was one mother and one father and they went to work and came home and made sure the kids ate and did their homework. All I ever got was, “find your own bliss,” and “hey, I want you to meet my new friend,” and “do what you think is right.” They don’t even wear normal clothes. Everyone else wears jeans and my dad shows up in a utilikilt and my mom has some velvet dress that dusts the floor when she walks.

February 2016

by Kirstin Lichtfield

My Magical Shape-shifting Friend

A friend is coming over this week. She’s going to help me out, help me get ready for Christmas, do a little babysitting, coach me some.

She’s a shape-shifter, changing from my younger self to my future self and back again, over and over. She is the fun Young Me, the one who organized huge events and still had energy left over to mingle with the big wigs, worry-free. But in an instant she is the wise, Older Me, the me I hope to be, who can sit still and listen and who looks back on the Now Me with a gentle heart and decades of perspective. Both of these women live in my friend, the one who is coming over to help.

The house is so dirty. The family photo Christmas cards were just ordered last night and it’s already December eighteenth. Baby is sick again. It’s a good thing my friend has magical powers. Which version of her will sit beside my father-in-law when he requests yet another iPhone tutorial? And then who will it be when my mother-in-law asks the same question fifteen minutes later? Thank goodness for my dear friend.

And what will I—the Real Me—do while my friend is wiping Baby’s nose? Telling Husband that he can’t possibly wear those pants with that shirt? Setting the cat food tray on the floor in front of the wild hungry beasts? 

I will watch and breathe.

Through the Open Doorway

Through the open doorway, I could hear my parents talking.

“Do you think we just need to…pull the plug?” Mom said.

My eyes filled with tears. Panic froze me. They had been talking about Tom, our cat since I was two. My cat.

I searched my brain for a different meaning to her question. At nine I knew exactly what she meant, but I didn’t want to believe it. Maybe she meant…some slang about his injury? Something about the money for the vet?

They really didn’t know I could hear them.

Why I Write

Inspired by Terry Tempest Williams

When I set out to offer writing and experiential anatomy workshops on the female pelvis through Portland Women Writers, I knew that powerful experiences and material would be sourced, but the impact of the writing and the transformations that took place in the workshops even surprised me.

It reminded me that sourcing stories from our body and calling upon our innate intelligence can awaken what needs to be remembered, witnessed, and known. In Writing the Story of Our Pelvis we embodied our uterus, ovaries, and pelvic bones. We felt the energy of our pelvic floor muscles and the voluminous nature of breath. We revisited the past when the Pelvis was sacred.  And we danced, cried, grieved, laughed, and delighted in awakening our female landscape.

Mostly we paid attention and made as one participant said, “sacred promises” to honor ourselves. Included below are some of those promises in poems and prose written by a few workshop participants.

We invite you to settle in, breath into your pelvis, and receive.  

Love Letter by Elena Weisenthal

I am only here for a short time, a moment, before I recede and all traces are swept up into mother ocean.

I walk on the shore with my dog. He is 10. He walks ahead of me, his footprints disappearing several steps behind him, filling in with sand and salt and water. In that moment of sun and surf sound, I know he will go ahead of me; a sigh of relief, but I will follow.

He does not look back at his receding footprints in the sand, so I do not look back at mine. He notices something new ahead, picks up his gait and moves forward.

This body, I have a prayer for you, a mother’s plea. Keep me as your passenger for as long as I can be contained. I will fill up your bowl with moonlight and rain, sunlight and sandy shores and loamy soil and poetry and stories. I will use your hands with intention. I will love you and tend you and I will use you to love. To mother my child. To soothe my husband. To pull my vital self from its hidden places and grow, and show, and unfold my many petals, a magnolia blossom reaching skyward before the rains come, revealing my beautiful interior until I fall apart and petals sink back to soil, sweep back to sea.

This Power by Donnella Wood

What is power 

An electrical charge

An on/off switch

A hand holding a wand

A land at its mercy

Eyes that only see through tunnels

Billowing buildings obscuring light

This is not that kind of power

This power knows breath 

and the way the foot finds the floor

It wraps an arm around a shoulder

and brings life into the World

This power is a wild horse 

galloping gracefully through open meadows and rugged landscapes

She lingers alone under trees and nuzzles bark and skin

She sees from the sides of her body

quietly and softly taking in

This power has been traumatized 

It has been asked to mask herself

To be brightly lit lace 

I know the mask of her sexuality

The “putting on”, “the need to be” “10 things that will make him Wild in bed”

This is something else

This power is a foreign landscape

A distant past

A shamed child

A wondering nomad

A longing heart

An unnourished land whose roots are there

burrowing down into their dirt dark caves

waiting for their next spring

on a clear day with the miles mapped out before us

we packed each other into the cramped comfort of the

car – on our right the constant azure pull of the river,

to the left the face of the gorge and walls of henna and

sienna-marked desert earth and cliffs towering

up so sharp against cerulean sky that they push against

our eyes and brains. we squabble over the radio until only

static remains and the hum of the wheels in between those

two soothing streaks of blue pushing onward even as we

resist, even as the only thing propelling us or holding us up

are the spirits cut loose – the static the hum becoming a

bloodsong even as we lose track of the fading brightness

and the point where the water beside us turns black as the

stars poke out one by one through the mirror above

flashing their silvery scales at us. the point where we stop

and start a remembering – the bloodsong a rush in our ears –

too young to have forgotten yet what it means to go home

but knowing the meaning was too self-imposed , a cliché,

a warmth that still sings to us at the end of the road

A week after Joan’s mother died Joan went to the Bloomberg Jewish Home for the Aged in Los Angeles and had the sad chore of clearing away her mother’s meager belongings. All of her mother’s well-worn clothes and cheap, gaudy jewelry would go to Goodwill. Joan emptied a drawer of nightgowns and was surprised to see a dog-eared black and white photo of a young man. He looked more charming than handsome. This was not her father. But he was familiar.

Joan’s memory crossed the continent and went back to her childhood summer in the Catskill Mountains, known then as the Borscht Belt. She focused on one night in the casino -- the exotic name for a rec hall -- of Bob and Sylvia’s Bungalow Colony. All the men were away, working in the city, while their wives -- weekday widows -- and their kids enjoyed a concert by an accordion player. The accordion player’s smile was infectious and her mother’s grin was wide -- she was mesmerized by him. Joan noticed, too, that he looked at her mother.

His fingers bounced over the keyboard and his body swayed side to side while women and children clapped. Her mother sang along, “I can take you in a taxi, honey. Better be ready by half past eight.” Finally she said, “I know this man. We worked together at Grossinger’s before I got married. He was no accordion player then. He taught women to dance. What a charmer! Yes, that’s Sid Lowenstein.”

After he took his bow and women gathered their children to leave the casino, she looked at Joan. “How would you like to visit your friend Susan for a while?”

“I do, Mom!”

Susan’s mother, Flo, wasn’t as enthusiastic. “Listen, Dottie, it’s close to nine already and Susan has trouble waking for camp.”

“I promise I won’t be long.” Joan’s mother left before Flo could protest further.

They played Monopoly while Flo stared at the clock, muttering and shaking her head. At ten she left the girls under the care of Susan’s older sister, Lisa. She returned momentarily, looking flushed and frowning. “Well, you’ll have to sleep here on the couch for the night,” she said to Joan. “After this, stay away from my daughter.”

Standing in that tiny room at the Bloomberg Home, Joan held the photo in the palm of her hand, and after more than a half century she understood why.