Jeepers! This brilliant poem flows like a river. Such skillful alliteration and line breaks!
And it makes me wonder about myths that would serve right now as healing agents
for pain you and I hide from ourselves and/or others. Importantly, this poem
also makes me wonder what costumes we’ll wear to represent our chosen myths?
And Happy Womyn’s Herstory Month! XO

Wonder Woman

Standing at the swell of the muddy Mississippi

after the Urgent Care doctor had just said, Well,

sometimes shit happens, I fell good and hard

for New Orleans all over again. Pain pills swirling

in the purse along with a spell for later. It’s taken

a while for me to admit, I am in a raging battle

with my body, a spinal column thirty-five degrees

bent, vertigo that comes and goes like a DC Comics

villain nobody can kill. Invisible pain is both

a blessing and a curse. You always look so happy,

said a stranger once as I shifted to my good side

grinning. But that day, alone on the riverbank,

brass blaring from the Steamboat Natchez,

out of the corner of my eye, a girl, maybe half my age,

is dressed, for no apparent reason, as Wonder Woman.

She struts by in all her strength and glory, invincible,

eternal, and when I stand to clap (because who wouldn’t),

she bows and poses like she knew I needed the myth,

—a woman, by a river, indestructible.

By Ada Limón from The Carrying.

* Alliteration: the same letter or sound at the beginning of nearby or closely connected words.

* Check out the gargantuan poetry archive on my website.

* An all-time fav of mine. And enjoy the fantastic video playing behind these two forces of nature!
Sisters Annie & Aretha doin’ it for all of us!