Arden Bartlett: Redwing, 1888

When she was done traveling,
when she longed for a home,
she came to live with us, my aunt,
bringing her rugs and her carved
wooden bowls, an eastern edge
to her eyes.

How many sunrises
had she watched alone
in places I’d only dreamed and imagined,
my choices already made
because of Mother’s illness,
her needs.

Two months later
my aunt was gone,
craving sunsets in distant lands,
but before she left she turned
to me and handed me
a silk bag.

“Count the beads
I’ve chosen for you,
one for every door I’ve opened:
the blue ones carry new shapes
of sky, the purple sing out
Follow!”

Julian Bennett: Redwing, 1888

Her braids and ribbons like soft gold.
Her eyes pretending to go shy.
Oh, I knew she thought of me
those hours in our pen-scratched desks
with windows looking out to light
and afterwards, our separate ways
to family chores, good suppers, bed.

Her shoulders in her buttoned dresses.
Her voice reciting sums and rhymes.
Oh, I knew she was to be
my twin tree by a forest glade—
I wrote in poetry—my mare
to run beside me through a pasture
in glowing sun till twilight comes.

Our hands together that soft night.
Our lips beginning their first kiss.
Oh, we knew simply That’s the one,
no words needed as we turned sixteen,
stars white and pure in hot June sky,
beginning what true couple means
for the shape and reach of shared full life.

George Blackmer: Redwing, 1888

They like it when I sing them hymns—
“This Is the Day,” “Amazing Grace”—
before I give them bread and apples,
leftover bacon, potatoes, corn.
“Open My Eyes That I May See”
they seem to say, those smooth black masks
so very far from Satan’s reach
I can only clap my hands and laugh.
“Brightly Beams Our Father’s Mercy”
I swear they softly chirr to me
as I lay down new pans of water
for them to dip and slide front paws
that seem to have small fingers.
“It Is Well with My Soul” my voice
embraces as the day’s last light
disappears through branches. I give
“Precious Lord, Take My Hand”
and damn if every time she doesn’t
climb right up to my bad shoulder
as if to make it well and strong
enough again to play the organ,
my favorite mama-wise raccoon:
Spirit Divine with those eight fat rings
in her long God-gifted tail.

Thirza Bohall: Redwing, 1888

Christmas. My red velvet skirt.
It fit so well. It hung so well. It glimmered
almost like the crimson satin ribbons
I’d braided to accent my hair.

Christmas. Precious oranges
in the shining bowl dear Papa bought
for Mama last year when she was still
alive, awake, aware.

Christmas. How could God look down so cold
and take again, His one son’s day?
A gasp, a lurch, a fall: my Papa dead.
Who heeds a daughter’s prayer?

Penelope Brown: Redwing, 1888

Murders don’t happen here anymore.
They used to: in the time of blacksmiths,
when husbands with flaming hammers raged
against wrong priests and fainting wives.

Can you tell I dare to write novels?
Once in a while a woman is published
and I’ll sell my soul to be one. Rain
on a roof: I’ll tell you who’s undone.

Father died. Then Mother died.
I inherited the house and time to be
alone with what I had always known:
stories of lust and longing and fear.

Don’t say to me I’m innocent.
Don’t tell me I can’t know what’s true.
Speak to my future publisher:
I’m making fiction of all of you.

Maureen Bunch: Redwing, 1888

I’m happy, married.
Food enough to eat every day
when I come home from Mrs. Grable’s
and cook it, him waiting.
And a bed with only two
in it, no matter his taking most.
I’m small anyway.
And now I have shoes of my own.

My Pap thought America
would give him work, let his hands
move so he could raise a family,
what the Lord says a man should do.
Orphaned, he jumped a ship east,
learned to wield rope and sails.
But New York City didn’t like his face.
He told us again and again.

Mum gave him healthy babies.
But we had to share too much.
Never enough of what others had
and then the frowns and the fists.
I learned to hide myself
behind doors, keep my voice
a tight hard whisper
begging my sisters Shh!

I’m lucky, married.
He brought me back to his hometown,
warned me Try not to be Irish.
He told me not to talk of my past.
I listen and listen to Mrs. Grable
but sometimes I just have to speak
aloud to no one, keep my story
alive for my own needs.

Adelaide Coon: Redwing, 1888

This morning, early light, the bright air cool
after so many days of heavy heat,
I dared to walk again where I had glimpsed
his ghost that day the blackberries had bloomed.

I didn’t really hope—how could I hope
that what my sorrow saw could truly be?
I’m sane. For sixty years I’ve known the world
as solid, logical, a place of sense.

And yet I paused where bushes with lush leaves
revealed wild twisting briars with ripe fruit
Of rounded glisten calling me to reach….
Such sweetness on my tongue—and then his voice!