Finishing Line Press, paper, $12 US
It’s a journey of love and loss that leaves us inspired and changed.
~ Cathy Smith Bowers, author of Traveling In The Time of Danger and The Love That Ended Yesterday in Texas
Excerpt
Purse Poem, 1985
I stand still as caught prey, praying prey,
as I’m scolded church side in rising heat
and gravel dirt, in that long forgotten dress,
before a morning service and the Lord himself.
Where is your purse? Surely, you must have a purse.
My humpback grandmother curved down
over my head, lecturing me soul to dentures
on southern genteel ways⎯⎯
Be prim in a dress! And never without a purse!
On the sin of idle hands laying around
in folded arms or resting in the lips
of waist and hips. I stand still,
hold myself in my hands,
gaze my woman fate.