From Fields of Blossom and Bone
By Stella Reed
An English translation of Homer’s Odyssey by Emily Wilson finds that the original text described sirens as bird women, not mermaids Women who peck at ligatures Women with plumes of basil and milk Women who are the arrow to your dove the canaries of coal mines Women with voices not tender Women who sing of strange fruit An augury of birds who hide the future in snowstorms the past in ringing trees Whose eyes hold sand from poisoned seas the grainy reels of pornography Women who refused constellations Who flew from windows to breathe the rain in greening pines Who keep sword beneath wing Whose breath smells of smoked peat and the meat on remote highways Women born of grief their sky a white wing Who nest in fields of blossom and bone If you wear their feathers in your hair you’ll hear the story of your death Women who teethe on roses and bleed on lilies Women who dream their mothers wear the crown of a bull Who cultivate language of ashes pitch cone Who yell Goddamit from telephone poles Women of gunshot and dusk Who read the calligraphy of felled trees of oceans bulging at neap tide Women whose dark beauty lives in seams Women who are plundered and razed How fury their chorus when they move their bodies through a sky clear of gods How you cannot touch them How you shall not touch them How they become sirens How they become song
Stella Reed (she / her) is the co-author of We Are Meant to Carry Water, 2019, from 3: A Taos Press. She is the winner of the Jacar Press Chapbook Prize for Myth from the field where the fox runs with its tail on fire and the Tusculum Review chapbook contest for Origami. Stella is a poetry teacher for several communities including homeless and domestic violence shelters, and Title 1 public school students.
12/12 / Poetry Reading and Conversation with visiting poet-in-residence Nicole Cooley + local writer Caroline Cabrera / The Gallery at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7-8:30 pm EST / Free
One workshop remains in our Workshop Series--SWWIM Lessons: From Prompt to Placement: “Surfing Submittable with Jen Karetnick – Keeping your head above water in the poetry submissions process” on 12/10 (register here). Price: $80/workshop. Time: 7:00–9:00 PM (EST). Where: Zoom.
Note: SWWIM Every Day is now accepting poetry translations for publication consideration. Please see swwim.org/submit for the full guidelines.
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