Contributor: Samara Golabuk

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A woman

knows about blood.
Pain is in her nature,
the kiss and pull of it,
the binding wisdom of it.

First,
we are perfect salt crystals,
bromide bald and frilled
with skirts and comfort.
The wild dogs
of puberty petrify us—,
we walked slow so life
will not scent us, send
us its feral hounds to ram
quick-gust snouts at our heels.
Those dogs are eager
for a taste of Achilles,
the white soft bar of it snapping
and wet in their grinning jaws
that drip and wolf at moons.

Mars, the crone—her red battle surface
gone to dust—scuffs and chortles
at us, our ample emptiness,
our shying, a florist of it flourishing
young girls — cherished blue dew-blossoms,
fragile and succulent to be held
so near the sun.


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Samara is a Pushcart nominee whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Inklette, Eyedrum Periodically, Anti-Heroin Chic, Eunoia Review and others. She has two children, works in marketing and design, and has returned to university to complete her BA in Poetry.