Rooftop Poetry Club - Christina Wos Donnelly

Christina Wos Donnelly

Bio:
Christina Wos Donnelly has lived on two rivers: the Niagara and the Potomac. She is the author of a chapbook, Venus Afflicted: Poems 1999-2002. Her poetry has appeared in over a dozen print and online publications, including Lilliput Review, Slipstream, Stirring and The 2 River View, and in six anthologies, most recently Susan B & Me (Big Kids Publishing, 2006).

She was an Artvoice Artist of the Week; twice guest-edited Stirring; and has been featured at Buffalo, Baltimore and Washington, DC reading venues including the Library of Congress. With Parris Garnier, Christina co-founded and co-edits the eJournal Not Just Air, now in its 3rd year of publication.

Poems:

Creation Myth

All these children were unexpected
yet not unwanted.

Most I cleaned and swaddled,
made presentable.

But One
sprang full-grown
from the head of Zeus

or rather

rose up from the foam,
already splendid,
looked me in the eye
and said,
“Step aside, woman,
and hand me my fan.”

(First published in Stirring)

Lot's Wife

God shrieked, “Go!
Flee now. Do not stop
to tie your sandal.
Save nothing. Empty hands
remain free.”

But something we call love
whimpered, “Please.
Please turn me
into a pillar of salt.”

Coveting the Ends of Bread

The heel, the curve
that called to the palm
of the hand,
the delicacy denied me
as a child.
My mother’s charm against
the next invader:
her cache of hard, dried crusts
a feeble defense against
mobilizing armies
and Khrushchev’s shoe
drumming the march.

(First published in Stirring)

Making the Dresses Move

“Mexican Ladies!” the choreographer
blared, “Make those dresses move!
MAKE THEM MOVE.”
And Jose-Limon-like each lifted
one hip over, up and back,
dancing down the imaginary street
as bastard amber lit the stage
and Aaron Copland’s Billy the Kid
warmed to broad daylight
crescendo.

I thought of that, this day,
thirty years since, walking
down this street, feeling
these hips in their own
undulant sway, leg swinging
from hip in a long, free
stretch of stride. Feeling
the full power of my full pride
of motion, feeling
this woman’s body move
this dress: my American dress
made in
Costa Rica,
Guatemala,
Indonesia,
South Korea,
or perhaps Taiwan.
(I can’t read the label
while the dress is on.)
And I imagine that, this day,
down those streets walk
other women, women who
made my American dress
making their dresses move,
making their own dresses
move.

(First published in WordWrights!)

Sprawl

Bright, bald suburbs
devour fruit
orchards, gobble corn
fields, flay wild
flowers to unleash
ambitious blacktop
manifestly destined
to vanquish
wilderness, evict
deer and blind with
shadeless glare
motorists gasping
for the air of one
surviving maple
on Maple Road,
their engines
coughing, bucking.

(First published in Artvoice)