Elizabeth Smart sat down by Grand Central Station
and wept, “I will not give up belief in true love. We can include
the world in our love, and no irritations can disrupt it,

not even envy.” In the meantime, a ten- or eleven-poem bonus —
autobiographies and necessary secrets — early writings
on the assumption of rogues and rascals siding with the angels.

The first and second volumes of her collected journals
cover the arts of Elizabeth’s gardening and cooking the smart way.

. . . . .

Margaret Atwood spoke a handmaid’s tale as an oracle:
“As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes.”
Edible women surface in life — before man’s bodily harm —

alias grace, oryx, crake. The blind assassin’s cat’s eye is on the robber bride.
In the year of the flood, the Penelopian heart goes last. Scribbler
moons and dancing girls murder in the dark — the Labrador tent fiasco.

Bluebeard’s eggs and bones buried in the stone mattress
tip the moral disorder in Persephone’s circle game and wilderness.

. . . . .

Susan McMaster, branching out into word-music, muses:
“What matters is that words are said clearly, and often slowly, enough
that they can be heard.” Pass this way again, dark galaxies

north and south, full of dangerous graces and women’s poetry. On stage,
hummingbirds learn to ride sugar beets until light bends
in uncommon prayer — until worlds shift waging peace. We move on

across arcs and boundaries of silence and violence — writing
line by line — celebrating women at the lunar-plexus heart of things.

. . . . .

Poet: Susan Powers Bourne
Source: Wikipedia biographies
Process: Remixed titles, montage