In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Hymn 10, and: Hymn 11, and: Hymn 20, and: Hymn 23, and: Hymn 25
  • April Bulmer (bio)

Hymn 10

Her heart was a small bird trembling,though she smelled of good mudand the back leg of the fox.1Her locks: long and plaited like wheat.A hank of hair in the gillof a fish, its torn breath.

She sang creation hymnsover bones 2 and the moons of her breasts,her dress stiff with brine(for the day had gone blue without its sunturning, as it will in a womb of time). [End Page 135]

Hymn 11

Her sorrow: the roots of it;its wide trunk and leavened branches.Her summer limp, heavy with the weightof blossomed things and torn hides.

Her breasts full of milk,running down herself,milk drops on the front of her dress.

Something howls in her mindlike a wolf in moon time.

And her heart is ripefor harvest, beneath the easyflight of crows, their rhymes.

She opens the grass, rain-wet.Dark, delicate rootsof good plants.A powerful spellwhen ground—like prayer—in her hands. [End Page 136]

Hymn 20

Goddess has marked the cliffsand high rocks with herown blood and timewill not wash it away:it is as shadow or honey.

Her sister rubs the sorenessfrom her with a bit of fish oilduring the moon of falling leavesand rasping nervous wind.

She wraps herin a shroud ofunbleached wool,for Goddess is a fallen stockor broken reed(she's torn at the root and bleeds). [End Page 137]

Hymn 23

Roses of blood:I am on my moons.Lamb of the season.My body a chalice,a shade of Communion.I am of wheat.I am legion.

We abide in His mystical body:He is a blue Chevy ora chifferobe of drawers.But we sing songs of the Goddessand brush our hair.Her breasts full of milk,early morning light.We are lips.We nurse in soft gownsat her teatsof Queen Anne's lace. [End Page 138]

Hymn 25

Morning light.But she is off her root:a broken stem and its bloom(she is of summer limp:the weight of blossomsor teatsor the sweat of mushrooms).

Dusk.She is a torn flower.Imagines sleep,her dirty kneesbent in prayer or grief.Dreaming of dreams:their new seeds. [End Page 139]

April Bulmer

April Bulmer has published ten books of poetry of various shapes and sizes. She has four university degrees, three of them graduate degrees in creative writing (Concordia University), religious studies (University of Windsor), and theological studies (Trinity College). She lives in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada.

Footnotes

1. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), 13.

2. Ibid., 34.

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