A Women's Day Tale

I have forgotten to collect the ransom
from the house chores. I have failed
my promises. On the clothesline, all night,
wind amuses itself with the forest prints
on the twin dresses of the women in my life.
One day in the whole year I forget to congratulate
you for being women, to buy some roses.

You forgive me, say, "Let's watch." and so we do,
see the forest spread and sprawl, wind darken.
We cross the thin membrane of glass,
be in the scene, be the protagonists.
I have no eyes there. Two women lead me, and yet
I am the one they trust with the foods and the knives.
We sit around the fire you kindle and listen to the djinn
our daughter brings out ripping her dreams.

My fingers feel the shrapnel of the light.
You say, out of context, "You should shave so I may
recall our wedding day."
Our daughter feeds the djinn although a sign
prohibits this. Today she can do that, right?
We are in the dim, on the other side of the pane.

Kushal Poddar

As I do every year, I would like to point out that for the UN Women, in France and Québec, today is International Women's Rights Day. It's not a celebration of how wonderful women are, their successes, and an occasion to post flattering selfies. It's a reminder that the rights of one half of the world's population are not equal to those of the other half, that in many parts of the world, the few rights that women do have are not respected. Today is all about the struggle of women for the same respect and opportunities afforded to men, and to end the discrimination and violence directed against them uniquely because of their sex.

To be woman

 

is a heritage, lineage, bloodline,

indelibly engraved in the serpentine string

of DNA she wears as necklace,

 

to be a leafing branch of the World Tree,

sower of seeds, healer of woes, magician,

 

the first tide lapping the first shore,

casting up the first fish-lizard egg,

feathered and plumed to take to the sky,

 

the magical flow of blood, drawn up

by the cycle of the first moon.

 

As long ago as that, as mists of time,

she has been, a simple thing,

the first, the maker of worlds.

 

Jane Dougherty

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Jane Dougherty

Pushcart Prize nominee, Jane Dougherty’s poetry has appeared in publications including Gleam, Ogham Stone, Black Bough Poetry and The Storms Journal. Her short stories have been published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Lucent Dreaming among others, and her first adult novel will be published in 2025 by Northodox Press. She lives in southwest France and has published three collections of poetry, thicker than water, birds and other feathers and night horses.