With these poems by Bonnie Stanard, we continue to highlight original fiction and poetry from writers who either published their first book at 40 or after, or who have yet to publish a book. Writers interested in submitting work should see our guidelines.
CROSSING THE HORIZON
In my past is a land of patchwork farms
where potato peels grow
planted eye up to spot the sun,
where tradition gets tacked to your core.
It’s benumbed by lore
and clothed in shirts frozen to the line
like a winter wash.
If you have holy socks
you can trade them for a bus
ticket and a way to get out
of the inner existence of
acres of crops and years of deprivation.
The ride generates gas fumes
as you make your way to
big business intersections.
It won’t be long before you reach
for a phone and order a pizza,
for by eating, some say,
you can outwit death
at least until forever becomes
a word you recognize.
That’s when you think of writing
something immortal.
I’ve dissolved into that psycho babble,
have pasted my aches on my finger tips
and lost limits to too much ink.
Every light is a North Star.
Every wind a jet stream.
My bad dreams hoard wastepaper.
It’s like putting coins in the cat’s dish
or jawbreakers in the bird feeder.
A choking bird is flapping against
my window now, trying to get away.
PERIOD OF UNCERTAINTY
Our mothers and grandmothers
took intimacy’s risk as Eve’s inheritance
as foretold them by sanctified men
who had nothing to lose
when the moon encumbered a lover
with motherhood.
We of the womb learned of security
as spelled out in marital chambers
made to the order of others.
But history proves we often
abandon our learning
and as the incurable daughters of Eve
we have reaped dirt rubbings and cursed births.
At a time when a man
was landing on the moon
with a small step for mankind,
we were taking steps against
our immutable incarceration
in motherhood.
We swallowed a pill,
one that took past-due dates
out of the calendar months.
Who could have foreseen
that prayers would arise
and call happenstance beatific?
That holy people would call
adjustments to fate
odious to the order of the universe?
People of good faith say
that the flow of monthly blood is divine
that the carnality of cessation is a sacrament.
Accordingly, to make a change
trespasses upon the providential order
of the master of our inception.
Has the altar been corrupted?
Who will speak of these things
with a tongue untainted by inheritance?
REWRITING GOOSEBUMPS
How long is the memory
of careless carnality?
Centuries of wanton acts
of passion are twisted with threats
and the power to hurt.
A trifle is the member
that fools the heart.
“Nature’s consequences,”
says the pastoral wisdom,
but the female’s body shows
the offense of trifles.
Little pills found their way
from laboratory to bedroom,
little pills big enough to bother the gods.
Mastery of the birth oracle
isn’t found in sacred texts.
“Carnal exists in the lap
of the mother,” it is said at the altar.
“Poverty is a blessing,”
is written on the wafer.
A love injury shifts
with the new moon
and brings bloody consequences
even for the often-raptured woman.
Perfumed beds.
Lovers and heartache.
A mother speaks to her daughter.
Bonnie Stanard grew up in South Carolina on a farm near the North Edisto River, went to college, married, and followed her husband’s career with moves from Virginia Beach to Brussels, Belgium. She has seen love and hate come and go. Childhood and youth. Faith and doubt. All of which seem to have no explanation or reason. It is often the case that she doesn’t know what she thinks until she writes it down. She has edited local periodicals in places where she’s lived. Her historical novels and children’s books are available at various online venues, poetry available from Main Street Rag and Belle Isle Books. She lives in Lexington, SC.
Bloom 