MISSIVE FROM THE SISTERS FOR THE RECENTLY TRANSITIONED

by Morrow Dowdle

The Advocate, August 1, 2024

And we’ll be so happy to welcome you, dudes—

that is, ladies. See, we’ll all have something to get used to.  

It won’t be easy. That’s why we’ll be here waiting 

with warm towels, massages, restorative yoga. We get it—

I mean, we’ve been women forever.  

 

Try not to get right on Tinder. You’ve just lost a penis,

and that’s a big adjustment. But can you believe it—

you could have a baby—and it would be your choice only.

Legislation’s gonna change by a landslide

any minute, so strap on your helmets.

 

The right industries will boom—Planned Parenthood, 

subsidized childcare, gun restriction.  More lesbian bars 

will thrive across the nation. Policewomen will run 

at least half the stations, military will get right-sized 

by command of female generals. 

 

Lean on us, your human instruction manual. Some of you 

will arrive on your period. We’ve got goody bags full 

of organic, eco-friendly maxi pads. Cramps?  

Our medicine cabinet’s full of Motrin. Hot flashes?  

We’ve got a closet of portable fans. We won’t mind

 

if you obsess over your new breasts for a hot minute, 

but maybe do it in private. Don’t stare at the women

breastfeeding all over public. Who knows, maybe 

next summer, we can all go topless. Imagine 

all the softball leagues we’re going to create, 

 

the roller derby teams spinning in rented arenas. 

Consciousness-raising circles will ripple out, endless.

You’ll find a goddess beneath each revival tent. 

Oh, the tenderness you’re going to inherit, 

the spaces you’re going to inhabit.  

 

Don’t cry if the men leftover question you.  

Or cry, if you need to. You have no obligation 

to respond, but if you do, tell them 

that you did it for The People.  

Tell them you took one for the team.

Morrow Dowdle has poetry published in or forthcoming from New York Quarterly, Pedestal Magazine, Fatal Flaw, and Poetry South, among others. They have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net. They edit poetry for Sunspot Literary Journal and host “Weave & Spin,” a performance series featuring marginalized voices. They live in Durham, NC.

FAVORITE GODDESS

by Karen Warinsky

 

Cynthia waxes, manages her money,

shops off season for the children’s clothes,
stretches the meat with casseroles,
smiles at her husband.
 
Selene wanes, 
lights small candles,
bundles the baby, the grandmother,
cocooning them in blankets woven for beauty,
hums to herself.
 
Like Hecate at the crossroads a woman waits for grain,
for water, the line winding and wide like the Nile,
life pressing against her hip,
laying gentle in her tired hand.
 
Beyond, in the pitch and quiet of space,
Artemis flies, seeking herself in beaming moonlight,
hunting a discovery for men
on a mission that will hold no answers 
for Earth’s struggling, steadfast daughters.

 
Karen Warinsky began publishing poetry in 2011 and was named as a finalist for her poem “Legacy” in the Montreal International Poetry Contest in 2013.  She has two books from Human Error Publishing: Gold in Autumn (2020) and Sunrise Ruby, (2022), both.  Her work centers on mid-life, relationships, politics, and the search for spiritual connection through nature, and she coordinates poetry readings under the name Poets at Large.

SAGARMATHA, GODDESS OF THE SKY

by Pepper Trail




The greatest pile of stone, you are known
by that name that rings in the Western ear—
Everest (after a Sir George, bureaucrat, surveyor)—
not as Nepali Sagarmāthā or Tibetan Chomolungma
and so you must be climbed

In our hundreds we come
we pay, we wait, we breathe from bottles
we ascend ice ladders, we cling to the fixed lines
we shuffle upward through the trash
we never doubt you must be climbed

Gasping in the starving air
eyes fixed on the boots of those in front
or, lifting our heads, on the queue
snaking toward the top of the world
we climb—you must be climbed

Perhaps tomorrow an error will be found
another mountain the highest, and so you
mere goddess of the sky, will be again alone
left to cradle the frozen bodies of those
who believed in nothing but this—

You must be climbed


Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

THE EXPERT MANICURE

given by Marilyn Monroe to Sylvia Plath in a dream

by Kate Bernadette Benedict

[In his new biography of Sylvia Plath, American Isis, Carl] Rollyson points to an often ignored journal entry from October 1959 in which Plath recounts being visited by Marilyn Monroe in a dream. Monroe, Plath writes, was dressed like a "fairy godmother" and appeared in a setting that she imagined to be similar to an upcoming dinner party with T.S. Eliot to which she and Hughes had been invited. Plath writes: "I spoke, almost in tears, of how much she and Arthur Miller meant to us, although they could, of course, not know us at all. She gave me an expert manicure. . . . She invited me to visit during the Christmas holidays, promising a new, flowering life." --Micah Mattix, The Wall Street Journal 
Image source: The Cheryl Flavour

Who is this, under stage light, bowing over my gnawed and ink-dark nails?
It is the White Goddess, with the platinum air.

It is the moon woman, in full, in full illumination.
She is in my thrall, it is a wonderment. She is at my beck and call.

See how she eradicates the blue discolorations!
She achieves an alchemy; the cuticles dissolve.

The bright chromium of her tools, the shimmering lotions!
How is it such holiness misspends itself on me¾

Me with my Maenad’s fury and my matronly hair?
It is like being stung by a seraph or poured into the cup of a tulip.

The jars are arrayed before us, the glamorous polishes.
Tangerines, mauves, and those appalling plasma reds.

These lights are the lights of Migraine, I cannot choose now.
But the hour is late, and the audience is waiting.

See them staring at us, in the Stygian shadows?
A vast arrangement of bald heads, utterly still.

What do they want from us, blonde godmother?
What must we do, do, do to make them satisfied?

I do not think they require a death.
That is another matter entirely.

What is the name of that pale lacquer with the mirrory sheen?
I would name it Isis, I would name it Icicle.

How you perfect me now, with your finishing touches!
White nails, the immaculate hands of a virgin, my hands.

They will dance poems onto pages, danses macabres, arabesques.
I will join you one day in the Pantheon, I am statuesque.


Kate Bernadette Benedict is a poet living in Riverdale, NY. She was the editor/publisher of the online poetry journals Umbrella and Tilt-a-Whirl.