Category Archives: Poetry about women

She Used to Say

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                  She Used to Say

“How many loves, Senora?” she used to say.
“Perhaps twenty,” I  would tell her.
I was forty when I married,
and I had traveled the world.

She had married at fifteen
and was a mother at sixteen.
By twenty-six, she was a mother of five.

When he drank cerveza,
he had beaten her.
She had not missed him when he left.

No more men, her children had demanded
and she’d agreed,
for the young man from El Chante who courted her now
was handsome and had money
but was not in her heart.

Still, I could see her pining
over the tall Arab
who hired the men of her pueblo.

He neither looked at her nor talked to her.
But in the night, I imagine she pined,
Arabian nights unreeling in her imagination
impossible and foreign.

One day, returning early,
I found her asleep on the divan,
a Mexican novella
rolling out of the television
into the eyeless air.

What futile dreams superseded
all these vicarious heartaches?
What magnolia-scented air
slumbered heavy in the hot layers of her sleep?

“How many loves?” she had asked me
on the road home from Guadalajara.
“Oh, many loves, “ I told her.
“I was forty when I married,
and I had traveled the world.”

 

For dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night

Prisoner of Beauty

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Prisoner of Beauty

To win a beauty pageant is a kinky dream.
You want to be the biggest fish in a manmade stream.
You’ll be closely examined both for charm and beauty,
then questioned for your aptitude in fulfilling your duty
at shopping malls and other places where you’ll be on view
displaying what fine work your folks did creating you.

That you’re a lovely model is not up to debate.
What an excellent product  they managed to create!
Compared to all the others, you simply glow and shine.
You have that extra element we find hard to define.
Is it a special need to please or is it blind ambition?
Or did you simply need the cash for your college tuition?

We rather hope it is the last prompting your pageantry,
so after one year on the runway, you’ll be able to break free
to live a normal life down here, milling with the crowd,
for when you’re up there, special, hobnobbing’s not allowed.
Jostled by the hoi polloi, your royal crown might tilt,
or there is a danger it might be revealed as gilt.

Not a thing of value. Just a pretty piece of junk.
A perfect metaphor all of this “glamor” to debunk.
Beauty is as beauty does the adage tries to tell us,
yet who we are is not the thing that pageants use to sell us.
You are a perfect object standing up there on a shelf,
made to please our eyes and ears. Not to please yourself.

Indeed, you’re slim and lovely. Your smile has its charm.
You simply look enchanting there on the emcee’s arm.
You will be fluffed and feted and put out on display.
It won’t be free, this privilege that you have won today.
But remember, please, when you’ve done all you’re told to do
that you will come down off that stage and simply live as you.

 

The prompt words are free, dream, pageant and kinky.

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/12/09/fowc-with-fandango-free/
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/rdp-sundaydream/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/your-daily-word-prompt-pageant-December-9-2018/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/kinky/

I Keep Your Promise

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I Keep Your Promise

Rain beats a riff on the back window
as I drive away from your familiar
promises, like lyrics of a worn-out song.
“Never again,” is made true this time,
my choice instead of your vow.

It’s only truth I take away with me:
torn buttons, bruises, broken dreams.
The empty baby carriage
you’ll find in the spare room,
one more unused space
in a house too rarely
a home.

I was the house
you entered
but never
spread out in—
the rumpus room
battered with misuse—
a refrigerator
filled with carry-out and cartons
with their “use by” dates all lapsed.

I was the melody
to that false chord
you loved to strike,
proud in your outlaw status—
that anchor that held your music to the page.

I see its strains floating after me,
as though that part of you
knows what it will miss
and even now
is trying to be found.

 

The prompt word today is riff.

Foreshadowing

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image from internet  

 

Foreshadowing

That broken leaf in your mother’s table—
was it really just a karate chop—
careless teenage abandon?
Or that first permission
you gave yourself
to vent your anger
in a physical act?

Hard lesson
that broke your hand
but did not break you.
Taught you, fast learner,
that a woman’s body
is a safer place
to vent.

 

The prompt today was leaf.

Exchanging Words on Little Santa Monica

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photo by Georgia King


Exchanging Words On Little Santa Monica

There on that city avenue,
I watched you as I sipped my brew.
Not the woman you’d chosen to woo
as you read poetry so true,
so raw, so blunt, so rare and new,
the air around you turned to blue.
Your sad poems caressed and drew
us closer. All that motley crew.

For me, love was a new venue
that night I first set eyes on you,
but there was such a ballyhoo
around you, that you had no clue
that I had joined the retinue
of women waiting in your queue.
But as I left, oh yes, I knew.
My life took on a brighter hue.

And though you were far out of view,
your memory stuck to me like glue.
Thoughts of you both birthed and slew.
Our meeting was long overdue
that night I saw you in the pew—
there to hear the poems I grew
from words carefully chosen and few,
I drew you in by some voodoo.

Perhaps our muses conspired and blew
winds from exotic Xanadu
or Zanzibar or high Peru,
the air around us to imbue,
giving us the selfsame cue:
this is the lover meant for you,
your octoroon and kangaroo,
the heart you’ll break, the fat you’ll chew.

Of all words plucked from life’s rich stew,
the ones that I would never rue.
Never would they ring untrue.
Those words that, though we might redo them,
never could I overdo them.
The words I’d sought my whole life through.
The vow I’d renew and renew.
That one rare thing I’d finally do.

 

The prompt word today is continue. It is the first word I’ve ever found that has a rhyming word that begins with each letter in the alphabet! I discovered this without consulting Google or a rhyming dictionary, which I occasionally have to resort to when a word is especially hard to find enough rhymes for. I found 64 rhyming words. Still haven’t checked any dictionaries. They may have additional ones, but these are mine, all mine! The only rhyme that is repeated is the word “you,”

“The” Words: avenue ballyhoo blew blue boo (boo hoo) brew chew clue crew cue do (doo doo) drew due eschew ew few glue goo grew hew hue imbue issue Jew kangaroo Kew, knew  loo mew moo new  overdo  overdue Peru pew phew poo queue redo renew retinue rue screw shrew slew stew sue through true undo untrue  venue view vindaloo voodoo whew woo Xanadu you zoo

 

The prompt word today is continue.

Burning Your Journals

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Burning your Journals

Who knew fidelity’s even stance
could be mitigated by circumstance?
That a subtle smile, perchance,
exchanged between you at her advance
would wind up in a swift romance
that flourished in that small expanse
between us and her winsome glance.

Who knew that you would go freelance
when love became our ritual dance?
And that I, still in loving’s trance,
would only learn it later, by chance.
Reading your words, caught twice askance.
First by your death, then grief enhanced
as I suffered loss anew
with this further death of you.

 

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The prompt word today was trance.

“Girls” Night Out

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Click on any photo to enlarge and view all as gallery.

“Girls” Night Out

Mary Tyler Moore, Working Girl and I Love Lucy—
 film nights with the ladies are usually juicy.
Although we’re staying in, all that’s tucked in must be outed.
All those mumbled gripes now brought to light and shouted.
Pulling out the bobby pins to let the chignons flow.
Kicking off the heels to wiggle arch and toe.
Slipping off the panty hose, loosening top buttons.
Gorging on potato chips and dip like teenage gluttons.
Drinking margaritas, martinis and mojitos.
Pepperidge Farm and popcorn, ice cream and Doritos.
When old dames get together, pull out all the stops.
Banish all the dust cloths. Lock up all the mops.
Rip up all the lists and turn them to confetti.
Break out the lasagne. Break out the spaghetti.
Fill the crystal bowls with M&Ms and truffles.
Ban antimacassars, doilies, tucks and ruffles.
Bring out your old 8-tracks and your 45’s.
Forget that you are mothers, grandmothers and wives.
Better shake your booties while they still can shake.
Better come alive while still able to wake.
Time enough for normalcy when you’re ninety-six.
When you’re only seventy, you’ve still got some kicks.
Leave your spouses home staring at their football games—
vicariously living while you’re out being dames.
It’s your secret life, for no one needs to know
everything you do and everywhere you go.
Let the whole world think you’re in there playing bridge
while you are jitterbugging and emptying out the fridge.
It’s more fun when it’s secret, so promise not to tell
when old girls get together and raise a little Hell!!!!

The prompt today was juicy.

Tete a Tete

6 Replies

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Tete a Tete

She seems to have made a career
out of practicing “sincere.”
Her trembling lip, her balanced tear
as she murmurs, “Oh, my dear,
I’m sorry, I know how you feel,”
work better when they’re meant for real.

In fact, she only lends an ear
because of what she hopes to hear––
shocking, scandalous or queer.
And oh, my dear, she’ll persevere.
Huddled over a drink or meal,
she can hardly hide her zeal

as she brings up your greatest fear––
your erring child or spreading rear,
the lover who’s been gone a year,
that bank loan that’s now in arrear.
She only asks because, you know—
just because she loves you so!

In patience, she is without peer.
She’ll face you, rapt, her face thrust near,
and ply you with another beer.
She is your confidant—your seer.
And though she says her lips are sealed,
her oath will too soon be repealed.

Her parting kiss, it would appear,
is offered to the ionosphere.
It makes no contact.  Does not adhere.
It seems like she’s shifted a gear.
The next time she dines out, it’s true,
she’ll be dining out on you!!

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The prompt word was “sincere.”

sincere.

Waiting for the Rest of Her Life

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img_7765photo and collage by jdb

Waiting for the Rest of Her Life

She has faith in the future that her life will fit.
She sits at home patiently, planning on it.
But as she sits waiting for the rest of her life,
the fear it won’t happen cuts like a knife.
As day after day goes by in a whirr,
she’s starting to realize it might not occur.

Her little white dog lies curled up beside her,
but stroking his coat won’t relieve what’s inside her.
She’s yearning for something­–she’s not quite sure what.
Inside her, the want of it roils in her gut,
then digs itself deeper into her soul.
It’s like playing a game where she can’t find the goal.

In every city, far up, looking down,
there are folks in tall buildings, surveying the town—
every alley and walkway for as far as they can
eyes staring out as they survey and pan
the small world below them that must have an answer
to this life that’s consuming them like a slow cancer.

I want to tell them that love can’t find you.
You must lean yourself over and pick up a shoe.
Put it on, then the other one. Walk out the door.
Waiting’s not what life was intended for.
We were pushed into life at the time of our birth,
and life goes on pushing all over the earth.

So all of you people with all of your faces
behind all these windows in all of these places,
Give up your pining and wishing and hoping.
No happiness lies in all of this coping.
Go find your soulmate, no matter the weather,
and then you can spend your life waiting together.

 

 

The prompt word today was “waiting.”

 

 

Promises

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Promises

When we first made our promises, our hearts were young and gay,
and all the things we had in life we thought we would parlay
from good fortune freely given for which we’d never pay.

But though the sun that lulls us with its warming ray
does not always scorch the earth, certainly, it may,
and all the tender shoots of spring by autumn turn to hay.

And so it is with promises, no matter what you say.
What I’ve noticed about promises is that they melt away,
for those who live by promising sometimes have feet of clay.

Promises lightly given sometimes start to weigh
upon the minds of those who have held their fears at bay.
Such things may cause the truest heart later to turn fey.

The lives we take for granted, sure we’ll always be okay,
in the end life complicates by answering with “Nay.”
So what you want to share with me, please share by end of day.

The prompt word today was “Promises.”