The Change

by Lucille Lang Day



I feel no different now
from how I did when the egg
ripened on its pedestal, erupted
from the follicle, drenched
in fluid, and floated toward tentacles
of the oviduct, to be swept inside
by cilia beating in synchrony
like grass blades in wind.

Yes, I feel the same longing
I knew when the egg was covered
with sperm, tiny writhing snakes,
and I can still imagine
the one sperm that enters,
cells cleaving to form
a hollow ball, bouncing
down the oviduct, then infolding
and implanting in the muscular
wall of my uterus, the well-
developed tail, pharyngeal gills
just like those of a fish
forming before finger buds,
heart and brain, the long
months of turning and turning
like a vase on a potter's wheel,
the finished child sliding,
wet and shining,
into her father's palms.

From The Curvature of Blue (Cervena Barva, 2009), by Lucille Lang Day. First published in Psychological Perspectives.

Something Coming

     by Gail Entrekin

We are beginning to understand something
of what is coming, to go beyond sensing a shadow
in the woods watching us, and to see it take shape,
see it coming toward us across a field, zigzagging
as it does, now standing idle and watching the sky,
now heading directly for us at a trot, and realizing
that we are seen, that it will find us no matter
what we do; we are slowing down.

We are
standing very still hoping to blend with the waving
greens of this raw springtime, to stay upwind
of it as warmer breezes pick up and buffet the leaves,
the grasses, tossing everything in a moving salad
of life, we sway on our legs, trying to move with
the air around us, and we stop thinking of what is around
the next bend in the path, stop planning our next
escape route, and begin to merge with the moment;
we have slipped into a painting by Van Gogh;
something is coming again across the fields and we
are open as sun flowers in full bloom
to these last moments on the earth.

Shaving Our Heads

     by Gail Entrekin



I say I’ll shave my head, become a moon-
face bald pink shining defenseless-
seeming creature in some kind of funny hat,

when your hair falls out in tufts on the pillow case
in the morning, your crisp silver beard thins,
soft flesh under chin shows through.

When we shave our hair, our skin-covered skulls,
which we have never seen, will be revealed,
embarrassed in their naked whiteness,

their lumps and bumps and funny spots, no help
for the unfortunate contours of our faces,
our strange prominent nose or ears,

heads that haven’t been seen by anyone
since we were babies and our mothers
ran their fingers through our delicate fuzz,

our fathers palmed our noggins
in their callused hands, admired how like
heavy fruit we felt, and wondered who was waiting
inside these perfect structures,
these elegant bony domes.

Recovery Room

     by Gail Entrekin

A cheerful nurse has come for me
to say that you are waking
and she leads me through the swinging door
into a room with three cream-colored mummies
lined up on their cots, and the farthest one,
unquestionably, is you, my boney balding
silver-bearded angel, just returning
from your flight, your dream sleep
someplace where no tubes and wires
pin you to this world,
no machines swallow you up,
take pictures of your organs,
find out things about you
that you don’t know yourself,
no men cut and paste and fail
to tell you what they know
and we, so desperately, need
to know.

The blue of your eyes
is the only color in the face of your absence,
and for a long time you drift in and out
so it’s hard to know when you are here.
But now you part your dry lips, search
for your voice, and ask again, What did he say?
I tell you again, unfazed by this repetition,
not so very different from our daily forgettings,
our system of gentle reminders, learning
to set aside our pride, our touchiness,
to laugh because sorrow is so wearing.

I take your long cold hand in my two
warm ones as I have taken you again
and again into my heat, and I tell you,
We don’t know.
We have to wait and see.