Fall 2020, Volume 29

Poetry by Marjorie R. Becker

The Water Wailed It Widened There When Women Calm and Keen with Luster Owned the Wanton Wild Calamitous

No one asked, no nadie inquired
oh where and is the river close,

the ocean near enough,
this bedroom blaze

amazes, as Felipe pointed out
and then Ramon who thought

he’d handled Wild Sharona, re-defined
Carmona, no, the men who never

ever swam the raw, the radiant and
somehow calming creek of feeling

oh so fanciful, oh so somehow fabulous each
time a man, another recognized just how abundant

we women were because we owned the sounds
and we breathed,

the water wailed and wondered, when
we’d wander in again, again and once

again to sing.

 

 

 

BIO: Marjorie R. Becker is an Associate professor of History and English at USC. Her publications include the prize winning, Setting the Virgin on Fire (UC Press, 1996), Body Bach (2005), Piano Glass/Glass Piano (2010) and The Macon Sex School (forthcoming), all from Tebot Bach. Poems have appeared widely in journals and anthologies including Levure Litteraire, Runes, Pratik, The Pink Panther, Peacock Journal, Desde Hong Kong: Poets in Conversation with Octavio Paz, Angle of Reflection, Beyond the Lyric Moment and The Southern Poetry Anthology, vol. V: Georgia.