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Three
Poems
by
Janice
Krasselt Medin
Meeting
of Minds
We
have no secrets here in this room
of women as we drift, wine
in hand,
from one cluster to another.
We long to dive into
luxurious caves
and feel soft arms around us. Who
could
not understand that need?
Most
of us had a mother who wanted
another kind of daughter—one
who
had crushes on boys, giggled over
names like Josh or
John, not Rachel
or Sarah. Some remained mystified
as
their daughters stayed a tomboy,
always with boys around,
never as dates,
but as best friends to shoot pool or
rifles,
or talk about sports. Other girls married
men,
later left that nest and finally
admitted out loud their love
of women—
those full lips, curves, soft breasts,
hips—even the swagger.
We
like to talk about sex, our first time,
how we prefer to make
love to a body
made like ourselves, how we come
stronger
and stronger with a woman,
and how good it is to taste the
female
of ourselves.
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Do
Not Resuscitate
The
monitor showed 3rd degree block--
a heart rhythm where the
atria, the top part
of the heart, beats separately
from the
ventricles, the bottom,
like random thoughts,
one thought
connecting to another,
the next two or three
escaping the
common thread.
The patient was 60 years old,
not a young
60
with kidney and liver disease,
a pacemaker buried
inside her chest
like a sunken vessel at sea. Its
engine
refused to spark a beat of the ventricle.
We knew
she was dying,
her blood pressure like air in a tire
leaking
lower and lower, and lungs filling
with fluid. When her
heart slowed
to 40 beats a minute, her eyes grew wide.
We
couldn’t believe her brain received
enough blood to feed
her words
“Is this the time to pray?”
We
answered in unison, “Yes.”
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Waking
I
marvel how during sleep
we tangle together like a tight
braid,
a lovers’ knot they call it. Even
when
we turn, we always hold on
to each other so we are one.
When
we wake at 3 am and talk
as if the night belonged solely to
us,
we try to forget in four hours ,
we will be swept away
from each other.
Your hands touch my breasts, my thighs,
and
every time I touch you in return,
the wonder of our first time
blossoms
once again, a light both of us
had never seen
before. As we
celebrate that first night, we know
the
memories of our touches
will return us to the shelter we have
made.
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