by Angie Hedman
Endurance
Floes fixed in eerie shapes—giant child’s
abandoned blocks, a village collapsed,
white ruins. We’re hulking ships mired
in frozen seas, but spring is creaking open.
We know we’re done with each other,
but current governs, bumps you back, spirals
me off. Our ice-pan lives stretch, float
and bob away, meltwater puddles full of sky.
Shadow images on my bedazzled eyes,
I stay snow blind, blink back the dark blots.
Ice cracks and presses. Deep within my hull
strong ship-ribs groan and shift, won’t stove in.
Pietà (triptych)
i.
What a weight for a maiden
to wear, but how delicately
the artist has cast my veils
as I cradle my child. I am a girl,
still, with a baby. No longer
an innocent, though I held
my head high through taunts
and murmurs at my calling myself
virgin, still. Infant on my lap but
—vision! horror! burden—he sprawls
a full-grown man, body (delicately)
pierced but (astoundingly) dead.
My babe’s first breath so recently
drawn, gone to last breath
stolen.
ii.
I’ll carve her serene.
Can’t help it, this girl of placid
fortitude has my heart. I’ll frame
her with folds of stone—skirts, veil
and robe, surround her lap with volume, play
with proportion, and no one will wonder
how such a small woman
can hold so stark
and naked a load
of wounded
stony flesh.
iii.
Pity indeed. Her one hand
is outstretched, on her other
fingers are splayed. His bared
foot dangles. Too young
too calm, the mother clasps
the broken body.
Frances Boyle is a Canadian writer, raised on the prairies and long-established in Ottawa. She is the author of two poetry collections, most recently This White Nest (Quattro Books 2019), and has also written Tower, a Rapunzel-inspired novella (Fish Gotta Swim Editions 2018) and Seeking Shade, short stories (The Porcupine’s Quill, forthcoming 2020). Her poetry and fiction have appeared throughout North America and in the U.K., with recent and forthcoming publications including Best Canadian Poetry 2020, Blackbird, Prairie Fire, Event, Cypress, Dreich and Parentheses Journal. For more on Frances and her writing, visit www.francesboyle.com, or follow her on Twitter and Instagram @francesboyle19.
Angie Hedman is a multi-medium artist, writer, and high school art educator who creates and resides in the great Midwest of Muncie, IN. She holds degrees from Ball State University in the areas of Metals, and Art Education. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming in Cream City Review, Barren Magazine, Montana Mouthful, Spectrum Literary Journal, Barely South Review, and Wine Cellar Press among others. She tweets at @artist_writerAH.