Well yes, I said, my mother wears a dot. / I know they said “third eye” in class, but it’s not / an eye eye, not like that. It’s not some freak / third eye that opens on your forehead like…
She sees an actor savoring a pomegranate in a film, / then buys one from a grocer mounding some, and / stains her table slicing it and stains her mouth and chin…
The girls are getting slimmer now as if, perhaps / to keep themselves from their mothers’ fates. / They float in thin blouses above the fat plates, / their bodies forced like flowers into shape.
THE REBEL’S FLOWER Stately they stepped through the garden closes, Walking coldly a pace apart; To them nodded the dewy roses Red as the wrath that glowed in her heart. Gown of damask and coat of scarlet – Oh but…
I hear the whisper of it / sliding from her grip, / catch that smack of wood / on concrete, pick it up, / see the split face, a long / cut along the sound hole…
Pauletta Hansel has been a pillar of the Cincinnati poetry community for decades. In March, she was named Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate. This poem is from her newest collection, Tangle, Dos Madres Press 2015.
In the poem “Smoking,” Joanne Greenway remembers her glamorous mother. Artist Sara Caswell-Pearce responds with a collage of images from mid-century women’s magazines.