Paula Coroi

The woman with child
When smudged on the canvas
Is empress of all, and mother to wild
Sky, earth and rivers
That flow with the shivers
Of her born.

I see her on the beach with her arms stretched out wide.

The woman who's seen
The end of her lovers
Wants no more fool games, her hands are all clean,
Don't touch my baby
don't touch my son
get off of him.

(Their deaths linger on her eyelashes
On muffled rainy afternoons)

When women whose beauty
has been stretched at the base
to Aphrodite still hold their duty
with the fury and passion
of earlier days...

The Empress Arcana
Smiles in the mirror
To the strong of heart.

(Those hips, will they hold
that flower of a man?
You know, I've been told
of wombs full of stone.
Of petrified children
still-born, never-born,
born-every-night-born
maybe it's for the best?)

I see her on the beach with her arms stretched out wide,
With this look on her face that says 'This is a woman.'
And I look at her feet falling under the tide
Then turning to roots digging deep
They ruin my sand castles.
They mess up my toys,
Scare away my family
And those little boys, who played with me in the water.
I see that 11 a.m. sun drop down like for a curfew
And light her wind-blown hair to branches orange pink,
And as she grows strong I start to feel weak
How they resist her call, the call of Mother, oh Mother -
This Mother wants me back and so she pulls me in,
She sucks me in the sea and
As I remember Kate Chopin
We smile at that silly memory and then she whispers 'Drink'
And I sink.