growing golden? Can you see the

sun rising on the mountains?’

I looked and I saw, and I saw the

women striding into the dawn,

their gowns flickering red and green,

hurrying to meet the morning.

Norah Hanson

Let Me Count the Ways

These are the ways you make me feel:

one ice cube clinking in a wine glass on a hot day

overfilling my mouth with my mum’s food

when I haven’t been home in a while

every hair on my head lifting in anticipation

my first sip of coffee

confident muscles stretching before a perfect dive bomb into

a cool, blue pool in front of the lifeguards and a sign that says:

no dive bombing

family, but the one you choose

a high note on a violin

the absolute joy at meeting a freshly-wrought human being

by someone you love

the split second of the heart leap when you’re swinging

on a swing at the upswing before gravity claims you

bliss at dancing your hardest to good techno and you look around

and everyone is beautiful

the cranium split when you think a completely new thought

and the world rushes in

thick snow over everything familiar

the searing burn from sitting too close to a fire.

Sheena Patel

Bath

The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air.

The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light.

Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance, and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot and the planes of light in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and let the green-white water, the sun-flawed beryl water, flow over me. The day is almost too bright to bear, the green water covers me from the too bright day. I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the sun spots. The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps by the window, and there is a whiff of tulips and narcissus in the air.

Amy Lowell

Ourstory

Let us now praise women

with feet glass slippers wouldn’t fit;

not the patient, nor even the embittered

ones who kept their place,

but awkward women, tenacious with truth,

whose elbows disposed of the impossible;

who split seams, who wouldn’t wait,

take no, take sedatives;

who sang their own numbers, went uninsured,

knew best what they were missing.

Our misfit foremothers are joining forces

underground, their dusts mingling

breast-bone with scapula, forehead

with forehead. Their steady mass

bursts locks; lends a springing foot

to our vaulting into enormous rooms.

Carole Satyamurti

Megan Married Herself

She arrived at the country mansion in a silver limousine.

She’d sent out invitations and everything:

her name written twice with ‘&’ in the middle,