Heroines

This morning, I read Napoleon Hill's list of men whose lives and life-works had been most impressive to him: Emerson, Paine, Edison, Darwin, Lincoln, Burbank, Napoleon, Ford, and Carnegie.

It inspired me to make my own list: Gloria Steinem, Frida Kahlo, Elizabeth I, Elizabeth II, Catherine the Great, Tori Amos, Mary Wollestonecraft, Mary Wollestonecraft Shelley, Virginia Woolf, Aphra Behn, Lady Murasaki Shikibu, and Carina Round.

Once I had the list, I wanted to collage it. So I did.

Haiku 14

Like a mined forest
being replanted, innocence
takes time to reclaim.

Mad America

Another beginning:

The light that comes through trees is always shifting.

That must have been why Annie liked it so much, and why, even on cloudy days, her chosen spot was under the poplar in the backyard, her face turned up, brighter and darker reds moving over her eyelids.

It wasn't quite far enough away from the house, where Alphie sat sullenly with his videogames, clicking at the buttons, the television bleeping so loudly she could hear it even here, over the rustle of the leaves.

But today, there was another sound, a pat-pat-pat-pat louder and louder and louder, a crunch crunch crunch, and then a panting that grew in volume until a girl crashed through the underbrush and into Annie's field of vision, twigs in her long ash brown hair. Eyebrows knit, the girl bent over and clutched her side, put her palms on her knees and then dashed forward again.

"Wait!" Annie called, taking off after her.

It was lonely out here in the backyard, and this girl looked about Annie's age: 14.

"I can't, they'll find me," the girl managed.

Dogs barked somewhere in the distance.

"Who's going to find you?" Annie huffed, already tiring at the lean girl's manic pace, her own soft body feeling heavier by the second.

The girl didn't answer, and Annie had to think quickly, or she'd be gone.

"I know a place!" she blurted, and the girl stopped suddenly, ran back at her and grabbed her arms so hard she felt them bruise.

"Take me there," the girl demanded, and Annie pulled her back several metres in the direction of the house, the dogs barking louder.

"Here," Annie said, kicking some leaves aside to reveal a heavy wooden door in the ground, a wide iron ring where its doorknob should have been. Annie grabbed the ring and hauled the door open. "It locks from the inside; here's the key," she said, pulling it from her pocket and thrusting it into the girl's hands.

"Thanks," the girl breathed, and darted in, the lock clicking shut behind her.

Annie caught her breath for only a moment before it dawned on her that the dogs would follow the girl's scent right up to the cellar door if she didn't do something about it. Her mind lit with the image of the rabbits she'd seen that morning by the barn, pearly things crawling on them.

She kicked the leaves back over the door and ran to the barn. Scrunching her face and diving towards them, she closed her fingers around two, loose fur sliding from flesh. She ran back to the cellar door, dropped them on it, and raked her hands across the ground to rid them of the bits that clung. She brought them to her nose and gagged when she caught the smell. Nothing to be done about it now - the dogs and their masters were here.

Haiku 13

It's the sand's roughness
That makes the oyster create
Its thing of beauty

Remember the Leaf

My prize-winner:

Remember the Leaf

Haiku 12

Obsessed with polish,
we miss the iridescence
of tarnished silver.

Villanelle 1

Written this time last year.

We dance at the emergency
Because the doctors are on leave
Although we bleed internally,

And surface wounds gape openly
Because the gauze is all unweaved
We dance at the emergency.

We search our partners furtively
For an Aspirin or Aleve,
Although we bleed internally.

That girl whose skin glows gorgeously?
Her heart is only freshly cleaved.
We dance at the emergency.

That man who lives luxuriously?
He’s lost something he can’t retrieve,
And so he bleeds internally.

This sometimes clumsy one-two-three
Is all we have that can relieve.
We dance at the emergency,
Although we bleed internally.