Writing In A Woman's Voice is now on summer solstice break from June 17 through June 23, 2018. New voices will resume here on June 24, 2018. Happy summer solstice to everyone in the northern hemisphere and happy winter solstice to those in the southern hemisphere and much happiness to all of you in all your seasonal celebrations.

A Short Half-Life

by Betsy Mars

Trickling tears well up

from some dire place –

a hint of a headache

nags at the back of the

serotonin control center,

the receptor gates raised with the blood waters –

with the ebb and flow

of the chemical mix

of the unbalanced psyche.

I reach for an explanation and find it

in the still-snapped compartment

of my daily dosage:

the remains of a pill, forgotten in the morning rush

until the reawakening of the sleeping

black dog that claws at my raw edges.

* * * *

The severity of withdrawal symptoms is associated with the half-life of the drug involved. Half-life refers to how long half the concentration of a drug stays in the body. The longer the half-life, the less severe withdrawal symptoms will be, since the drug will have the capacity to taper itself off of the biological system of the person taking it.

Source: Pristiq Withdrawal (Desvenlafaxine) - Drugsdb.com http://www.drugsdb.com/rx/pristiq/pristiq-withdrawal/#ixzz4ySRqXsPY

Betsy Mars is a southern California poet who is in a perpetual battle with change – finally coming to some kind of a truce, and at times even love and acceptance. She is an educator, mother, animal lover, and over-excited traveler. Her poetry has been published in a number of places, both online and in print, most recently in Sheila-Na-Gig, The Ekphrastic Review, and Red Wolf Journal. Writing has given her a means to explore her preoccupation with mortality and her evolving sense of self.

Poet Laureate of the Laundromat

by Rie Sheridan Rose

Poetry full of iridescent imagery

awes my mind.

Words that sing an unknowable cadence

but speak volumes.

Intricate tapestries woven of words

creating miraculous visions...

But they are not my poems.

My poems speak fairy tales,

or slyly offer sarcasm to

prick a pompous bubble.

My poems offer philosophy,

but cracker barrel, not heavenly.

My poems weep remembered tears,

or share forgotten songs.

My poems tell of laundromats,

not Luxembourg.

The pictures they paint

aren't by the numbers,

but they aren't Degas either.

More Norman Rockwell than

Andy Warhol...

I leave surrealism to

those that speak in riddles.

I am a meat and potatoes girl,

uneasy in the banquet hall.

But my poetry is my own,

and to me, it shines like diamonds.

I am poet laureate of the laundromat.

* * * * *

"Poet Laureate of the Laundromat" first appeared in Writer's Café and is part of Rie Sheridan Rose's chapbook Take Out.

Bachelor Girl

by Sarah Henry

Her church holds

a night of recreation

for singles who

are active members.

She seeks

a determined man.

A preacher

leads the group.

He flattens his hands

on a long wooden

table to be honest.

“Now,

I don’t want

any of you here

going out

with each other

without my consent,”

he says,

from an omniscient

point of view.

And then--

“Let’s order pizza.”

Members rush

into an annex

and play frantic

volleyball matches.

Loners pace

back and forth

on the sidelines.

Out in the parking

lot, dark, desperate

snow falls

over lost cars.

The girl’s bed

will be half empty

or half full.

Time will pass

slowly or quickly

until she goes again.

* * * * *

Sarah Henry studied with two U.S. poet laureates at the University of Virginia. Today she lives near Pittsburgh, where her poems have appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Pittsburgh Poetry Review. More of Sarah work has been included in Writing in a Woman's Voice, MUSED:The Bella Online Literary Review, and the International Woman's Day issue of The Camel Saloon. She is retired from a newspaper.

In Retrospect,                                            by Devon Balwit

the mistake was to trust

machines, their makers,

my will, to be stronger

than sly algorithms,

the dopamine rush of

the ever-larger number.

The mistake was to offer up

one part after another in

a peep-show to strangers,

assuming one would fall

in love, my very own

happily ever after.

The mistake was not to leave

once I knew, but what

a profusion of flowers after

the fat lip, the cloy of lilies

over blood, the belonging

signaled by the blue bruise.

The mistake was to turn

my back on the children,

thinking them safe

in their rooms, the camera

slowly panning over

the slack-faced teddy bear.

The mistake was to absent myself

from seasons, from lungs

and rough hide, itch and chaff,

the pebble in the shoe,

the slow hours where nothing

yet everything happens.

* * * * *

Devon Balwit teaches in Portland, OR. She has six chapbooks and three collections out, among them: We are Procession, Seismograph (Nixes Mate Books), Risk Being/Complicated (A collaboration with Canadian artist Lorette C. Luzajic); Where You Were Going Never Was (Grey Borders); and Motes at Play in the Halls of Light (Kelsay Books). Her individual poems can be found here as well as in The Cincinnati Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Fifth Wednesday, the Aeolian Harp Folio, Red Earth Review, Queen's College Quarterly, The Fourth River, The Free State Review, Red Paint Hill, and more.

On the Syllabus

by Devon Balwit

What we’re trying to teach is that failure is not a bug of learning, it’s the feature…

                                                                                                             Rachel Simmons

Sign me up for failure 101, teach me

a cat’s cradle for empty hands,

a repurposing. Walk me through a syllabus

detailing loss: this being ignored, this

belittling, this rejection, this the brain

consigned to a shelf, this the body

constrained to the traces, a hard-used

machine not under warranty. All my life,

I’ve been cotton-swaddled, able to fall

the length of the belaying rope

but no further, always bailed out

before a night spent on piss-stained

concrete. Push me down, but gently.

Punch me where I am already

padded. Let me practice bruises

before fractures, being average

before the hard-scrabble of a tarp

on the banks of the freeway.

Thank you for helping me transition

into ordinary, for easing me down

from my pedestal. I have taped

your certificate to my wall, a surrogate

for the mantel, the well-dusted altar

of the bourgeois temple.

* * * * *

Devon Balwit teaches in Portland, OR. She has six chapbooks and three collections out, among them: We are Procession, Seismograph (Nixes Mate Books), Risk Being/Complicated (A collaboration with Canadian artist Lorette C. Luzajic); Where You Were Going Never Was (Grey Borders); and Motes at Play in the Halls of Light (Kelsay Books). Her individual poems can be found here as well as in The Cincinnati Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Fifth Wednesday, the Aeolian Harp Folio, Red Earth Review, Queen's College Quarterly, The Fourth River, The Free State Review, Red Paint Hill, and more.

Flirting with Death - a Love Poem

1.

In love with the rush. Not the high.

I’d shoot up again and again.

He was a born rescuer.

I was perfect, a bottomless pit.

We sniffed around each other like dogs.

“It takes one to know one,” he said.

2.

Before we went to bed we

went to dinner.

He kept hold of my right hand.

I’m afraid of overdosing,” I confessed

over coffee.

His voice had a nasal quality.

“Marry me,” he begged.

3.

In the beginning we were fierce lovers.

4.

“Shoot me up,” he’d plead, toward the end.

But I wouldn’t.

He thought it meant I loved him.

5.

I didn’t.

I wanted the drugs for myself.

* * * * *

"Flirting with Death – a Love Poem" is from Alexis Rhone Fancher's 2018 chapbook Junkie Wife.

Alexis Rhone Fancher is the author of How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen and other 

heart stab poems, (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), Enter Here (2017), and Junkie Wife, (2018). She is published in Best American Poetry 2016, Rattle, Hobart, Pirene’s Fountain, The American Journal of Poetry, Plume, Nashville Review, Diode, Glass, Tinderbox, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. Her photos are published worldwide, including River Styx, and the covers of Witness, Heyday, The Chiron Review, and Nerve Cowboy. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. She lives in Los Angeles. www.alexisrhonefancher.com