Thursday 18 January 2018

Questions of Enough

by Julene Tripp Weaver

—after Nuala Archer, From a Mobile Home


How important may a woman become
begs the question, to whom? What values 
has male dominion denied? Lost vistas 
trapped in the dense woods of male 
saplings, the favored seeds they drop.

And, how powerful may a woman grow
demands the query, what authority has she 
available to wield? Each profile she rises 
to fill, her mirror reflects binding expectation,
that stifle and silence her genus creation.

What living wealth may a woman feel?
A growing seed seeks fullness, 
stop this trimming to Bonsai perfection—
stymied growth, shear cut, metal to soft
flesh, such discipline imposed.

What words travel where—from her lips,
out her arm, through her hand, to the page, and into
which book, what audience, before her Cassandra
is guillotined to silence while her newfound joy 
is exposed to a world willing to ignore.

Questions to ask of being born female—
what cracks we make, our dandelion 
attempting flower.


* * * * *


Julene Tripp Weaver is a psychotherapist in Seattle; she worked in AIDS services for over 21 years. She has three poetry books, Truth Be Bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS (Finishing Line Press, 2017), No Father Can Save Her (Plain View Press, 2011), and Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues (Finishing Line Press, 2007). She is widely published in journals and anthologies. Her poems can be found online at: Anti-Heroin ChicRiverbabbleRiver & South Review, The Seattle Review of Books, HIV Here & Now; a creative nonfiction piece is published by Yellow Chair Press, In The Words of Women International 2016 Anthology. Find more of her writing at www.julenetrippweaver.com.

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