Tag Archives: find your magic

written at 3:22 in the morning while flying through winter storm harper (somewhere over the midwest)

22 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

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Of course it’s magic: when the airplane leaves
the laws of gravity, that slight shifting

in my awareness. The sky opens, heaves
us up into it. Just then everything

flows, a tingling in my teeth and toes —-
vodka, cocaine, even the Mile High Club;

it all might happen. Like magic that shows
us how to escape. Millay’s candle stub

sputtered, burned out at both ends. My passion
seems a small thing up here, too. The sky rifts

around us. It’s not the will, it’s the means;
miles high in a box indifferent to sin,

to lewd moods, to all of desire’s gifts.
This realm of celibate gods, sexless fiends.

again again again

01 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by in Feminism, Poetry, sonnet

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But my mother’s mother, Maleficent,
widowed from her first love, and that love’s first
ripe fruit, moved through her father’s realm, torment
in her heart, her native tongue, being cursed
as all fairy tales curse us with ruin.
Again. Again. Again. “Find your magic,”
grandmother replied at each doubt—her one
dictum, fed with her green fire and sapphic
faith. She spoke so little of pain that we
forgot that she was a widow with no
regret, practiced in delight. I recall
all her stories, of heroines scrubbed free
of men’s curses. Tales where not one widow,
crone, step-mother died—just burned for us all.