Having just spent an exceptional week of study and sturdy walks from one end of northern New Mexico's Ghost Ranch property to the next, in the company of more than one hundred women writers at A Room of Her Own (AROHO) retreat, I was introduced to the concept of the hero/heroine's journey with its setting off from a safe, if not full color, home - think Dorothy in Kansas not yet Technicolor; crossing the threshold; dipping into battle or exploration - yellow brick road; witch on a bicycle with monkeys; and rising back up again in the companionship of your posse, then...having prevailed, returning.
This is, mind you, an enormously over simplified version of the equation. We struggled, the ten of us in this Master Class, with just what weapons, wounds, and accolades the woman receives in her trek. Given a writing prompt to record my version of the heroine's journey, the poem below is what was generated:
(amniocentesis: voyage of perfect delay)
Root cellar here or bomb shelter
Cloister underground with a sloped roof of green, odd crown
slanted peak of lips just above desert ground
elsewhere, in this day
a woman nurses her newborn daughter on the lawn
having labored fifty-four hours, walking the hospital halls
massaging stiff nipples to induce, then standing in a shower stall
no wider that the thinnest of thumbelina rooms, closet for pain, place to press
her lower back hard into the flat hands of her partner
Her birth canal not yet ready to split (they would sew her up afterward)
child holding firm, attached to the fertile inside while
weary mother imagines rest, though she falls victim to recurrent nightmare,
river flooding, imaginary twins birthed stillborn on the bank, in a forest
manifest in the sentences of relatives who doubt her stability, her ability, her dabbling
in mood swings, her age
predicting down syndrome or more, guessing at the sex of the baby, the needles
that probe, amnio performed twice for the wiggly fetus already sure
of herself, intent to repeat her perfect inheritance
smart woman cupped inside of smart woman, as if brilliant wooden dolls,
matruska with heads screwed down tightly, but bright and reliable inside
Nearly forty this first time mother, intent that the valley she traverses
rife with land mines and wet stony walls double her height pose no obstacle -
three solid months of vomiting - "means the baby will be hairy" tells a sister
"pupils dilating?" you must be having a boy, speculates another
two more months confined to bed - preeclampsia and threats of fatal discharge
then the long birth that did not come to Caesarian, though the doctor
wished this "no more than a scarjust at bikini line" he pried
attempting to assure her that this intercession would be best
bombs of resistance brewing in her chest even as they strapped on
the monitor to measure the small baby's heartbeat, quickstep and
frightened pause in the succession of contraction after
contraction, almost two days and still no appearance of miracle,
they attached a small screw too to the baby's skull
reconnaissance up through the dark tunnel, into the territory
now occupied
finally succumbing to call for pain relief and then sleeping, mother can let down
her taut breath, baby girl still rocking (silhouette) inside
Mother passes through canyon walls, new night dreams, then waking to spot companions all around under thin blankets, women ready with champagne and
with baby's breath and thorny roses, when
the nurse calls quickly upon morning inspection that she feels hair down there
on the crown of this incoming warrior girl, tiny rattle, new wordsmith
arriving with language entirely all her own, in soothing
sips from cool underground
naked to passing night she is laid on light cloth as she
grasps at the double doors, holds against quickening wind
before the spinning wheel can cart her mama back up to the earth again
lips parting
This is, mind you, an enormously over simplified version of the equation. We struggled, the ten of us in this Master Class, with just what weapons, wounds, and accolades the woman receives in her trek. Given a writing prompt to record my version of the heroine's journey, the poem below is what was generated:
(amniocentesis: voyage of perfect delay)
Root cellar here or bomb shelter
Cloister underground with a sloped roof of green, odd crown
slanted peak of lips just above desert ground
elsewhere, in this day
a woman nurses her newborn daughter on the lawn
having labored fifty-four hours, walking the hospital halls
massaging stiff nipples to induce, then standing in a shower stall
no wider that the thinnest of thumbelina rooms, closet for pain, place to press
her lower back hard into the flat hands of her partner
Her birth canal not yet ready to split (they would sew her up afterward)
child holding firm, attached to the fertile inside while
weary mother imagines rest, though she falls victim to recurrent nightmare,
river flooding, imaginary twins birthed stillborn on the bank, in a forest
manifest in the sentences of relatives who doubt her stability, her ability, her dabbling
in mood swings, her age
predicting down syndrome or more, guessing at the sex of the baby, the needles
that probe, amnio performed twice for the wiggly fetus already sure
of herself, intent to repeat her perfect inheritance
smart woman cupped inside of smart woman, as if brilliant wooden dolls,
matruska with heads screwed down tightly, but bright and reliable inside
Nearly forty this first time mother, intent that the valley she traverses
rife with land mines and wet stony walls double her height pose no obstacle -
three solid months of vomiting - "means the baby will be hairy" tells a sister
"pupils dilating?" you must be having a boy, speculates another
two more months confined to bed - preeclampsia and threats of fatal discharge
then the long birth that did not come to Caesarian, though the doctor
wished this "no more than a scarjust at bikini line" he pried
attempting to assure her that this intercession would be best
bombs of resistance brewing in her chest even as they strapped on
the monitor to measure the small baby's heartbeat, quickstep and
frightened pause in the succession of contraction after
contraction, almost two days and still no appearance of miracle,
they attached a small screw too to the baby's skull
reconnaissance up through the dark tunnel, into the territory
now occupied
finally succumbing to call for pain relief and then sleeping, mother can let down
her taut breath, baby girl still rocking (silhouette) inside
Mother passes through canyon walls, new night dreams, then waking to spot companions all around under thin blankets, women ready with champagne and
with baby's breath and thorny roses, when
the nurse calls quickly upon morning inspection that she feels hair down there
on the crown of this incoming warrior girl, tiny rattle, new wordsmith
arriving with language entirely all her own, in soothing
sips from cool underground
naked to passing night she is laid on light cloth as she
grasps at the double doors, holds against quickening wind
before the spinning wheel can cart her mama back up to the earth again
lips parting
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