Winning with poetryinternational.org and the Poetry Project

Congratulations to: Therese Pace

With: ‘WOMAN’
Written in response to: Hearth by Claire Power

WOMAN

To her, Nature has been kind and cruel.
Fitted her with a heart that walks her
strong, fragile, her soft pulpous endocarp
tender with pain, flexed with resilience.

In her special ordinariness she watches
the world go by; suffers at its hands;
appeases, dispensing with favours like
bucketfuls of rain upon the sidewalk.

A buttress, earthquakes will not shift her.
Grappling, she vigils on midnight fevers;
dims, recedes, draping her corporeity
around her sentiments like a tee shirt.

Her kinkiness has punch. Her dignity
is weighed with mien. She carries creation
on her navel like a pinafore. Man installs
himself in the palace of her heart like

original sin. Because of him she grows
boughs upon trees, reaches for the moon;
dwarfs, thrifting on choices and desires,
learning to soar and nosedive.

Her breasts are milk and honey. On them
she wears her talisman like a scimitar,
her paradox like a broach: lantern,
olive sprig, sponge and kernel stone.