Five Poems by Karen A VandenBos

 

Teachings of the Grandmothers

We would listen to the stories of the

grandmothers as we sat around a ring

of fire.

They told us of the days of long ago when

women ruled the earth and their words

were wisdom and poetry.

It was a time when the moon called to them

as they slumbered and gave them their

dreams.

A time when they gathered moss and twigs

and made little altars where secrets were

planted and the stars were their guides.

They taught us which plants were sacred

and which ones to avoid. They taught us

to journey while sitting still.

They knew the language of the forest, bathed

naked in the river and learned from the pull of

the tides.

They foraged for berries and the mushrooms

that opened when lightning cracked the sky

and the screech owl issued a warning.

They came together and weaved stories

from the blood of their mothers and listened

as the fog twisted around the trees.

They conjured the wind to carry their

message and counted the fertile days and

divided them by the age of their sisters.

Even though we were young, we already

wondered what would happen to these

stories when the grandmothers were gone.

To All the Pretty Girls

I saw you as beautiful with your

grace, your Twiggy stature and

long, straight hair.

Your skin was Pond's soft, lips

dewy with gloss, your eyes lined

in black and nails polished to

match your fashionable clothes.

You looked like you belonged on

the cover of Seventeen.

With your dazzling smile and

perfect teeth, you walked down

the halls of our high school like

you owned it and caught the cat

calls from the boys in your hand

and blew them kisses in return.

You had a flair for conversation

and small talk and always said

the right thing. Your pout could

bring the devil to his knees and

keep you out of detention.

I imagined your home looked

like the cover of House Beautiful

magazine and your wishes were

handed to you on a silver platter.

I put you on a pedestal but my

own self doubt never imagined

yours.

Years later I saw you on a night

out and I noticed all that was once

pretty had faded and unlike you,

I was just beginning to bloom.

Bearing Witness

The moon rose like an egg from deep

within the womb of mother earth. That

night the wind was unstoppable and the

stars gathered in new formations never

seen before. The dream felt like it was

something new and ancient all at once

and I woke up tangled in the sheets staring

into the eyes of death and endured a tsunami

of epic loss. As the pieces of the dream

slowly slipped into a black obsidian hole,

I felt the pull of threads from a thousand

sorrows wind through me and felt so sad

that the moon and stars were the only ones

there to bear witness.

Eighteen

It was the night I got hammered by

a screwdriver. The night I fell from

a ladder as I reached for my dreams

and wrenched my heart on the edge

of a nightmare.

It was the night I clamped myself

to a bucket and poured out my soul.

My head was held in a vise grip of

agony as a bolt of lightning drilled

through me and I felt the teeth of a

saw gnawing at my brain.

Pounding glass after glass I became

unhinged and chaos became my

ruler. I pulled your knife from my

back and became putty in your

hands. You stroked me with the

bristles of your brush and shovelled

more lies into my mouth.

When the clock struck closing time

you pulled all the rusty nails from

my empty glass and levelled me with

an icy stare. It was then that I knew

that Alice really didn't know what he

was talking about. I had just turned

eighteen and to me there was nothing

to like.

Summer of '73

Nineteen seventy-three, the year I graduated

from high school, took off my thick lensed

wire glasses and began to look at the world

through new contacts. A world that took me

from angst filled journals to driving around

in cars with Annie Green Springs and rolling

papers. I wore my hair long and straight and

bell bottom jeans even longer. I shoved my

bras to the back of a dresser drawer and hid

tarot cards on a shelf in my closet. I read

Sylvia Plath and consulted my horoscope.

In my brother's room I saw Snoopy melt off

his dog house as the black light hit the poster

wall and I hit the bong pipe. Stoned, I watched

the vinyl spin as Neil Young sang something

about 'burned out basements' and I flew with

Pink Floyd to the 'dark side of the moon'. My

babysitting money went towards dime bags,

love beads and the latest albums. By this time

I knew Bob Dylan was the god of poets and rock

and roll was gospel. Trippin' on acid I'd watch

wax drip from the candle burning in an empty

bottle of Madeira wine and explode into canyons

of dreams. I stayed up until 3 a.m. reading and

slept until noon. Around me, freedom was all the

rage. By the end of summer I had shed my skin

and all of my childhood illusions had been driven

under ground.

Karen A VandenBos was born on a warm July morn in Kalamazoo, MI. She has a PhD in Holistic Health where a course in shamanism taught her to travel between two worlds. She can be found unleashing her imagination in two online writing groups. A Best of the Net nominee, her writing has been published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Blue Heron Review, The Rye Whiskey Review, One Art: a journal of poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Ekphrastic Review, Southern Arizona Press, MacQueen's Quinterly, Moss Piglet, Panoply, Peninsula Poets and others.