by Tony Brinkley
Sestina on a Cracked Mirror
I was alone in a bathroom at camp, posed naked
in front of a cracked, full-length mirror,
when the girl down the hall—the one with dimples
and a great laugh—stepped in, blurted, What’s happening?
disgust obvious in the scarlet-lined curve
of her pink-glossed lips. Evidently, she’d outgrown
her need for self-examination, while—parts of me grown
into shapes I didn’t recognize—I was standing there, naked,
looking a plucked pigeon, as I remember it: curved
teacup breasts, bony kneecaps, with moles mirrored
back at me like a poodle’s spots. What’s happening?
Was there no way to control this? The swelling, the dimpled
buttocks, the wet curls, emerging in the dim, pale,
“down there?” Was this really me, thrown
into maturity without instructions? What’s happening?
What was it I heard the older girls whisper? Naked
in the back seat, imagining arms, legs mingled, mirroring
the photos in the magazines hidden, tattered and curled
under Father’s bed. It was only later, when a hand on the curve
of my hip skidded out of control, in a room in Boston’s dim, peopled
streets, that—gazing into a mirror, any mirror—
I saw, finally, someone chosen, sought after, grown?
into her real life? (I hoped, prayed….) What’s happening!
This innocent me, subsumed into creation’s naked
adventure? My breasts swelled, my nerves frayed, naked
beneath skin, and then, one morning, I couldn’t erase the curve
of my belly in a reflected silhouette. What’s happening?
I examined my clothes in the bathroom’s dimmed, pale
light, muttered chants, prayed. (How was it that I’d grown
religious? I really didn’t want a miracle, a mere or-
dering of my young life would do!) Mired
in disbelief, before I knew what had happened
a doctor calmly explained: Six weeks. Growing.
What did it mean? My head sank, tears curved
from my eyes, weaving down hormone-pimpled
cheeks, to my chin. Uncertainty loomed, or was it naked
fear? Until I sensed the flutter. Arms. Legs? What’s happening?
A tiny heart, mirroring my own heart’s beat. My naked
psyche swerving toward tenderness. Toward this my child. Growing.
Suellen Wedmore, Poet Laureate emerita for the small seaside town of Rockport, Massachusetts, has been awarded first place in the Writer’s Digest’s Rhyming Poem and Non-Rhyming Poem Contests, her chapbook Deployed won the Grayson Press annual contest, her chapbook On Marriage and Other Parallel Universes was published by Finishing Line Press, and her chapbook Mind the Light won a first place in Quill’s Edge Press’s “Women on the Edge” contest. Five of her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her full-length collection of poems, A Fixed White Light, has been published by Down East Books. She graduated from the MFA Program in Poetry at New England College in 2004.
Tony Brinkley’s poetry, art and translations have appeared recently in Collateral, Trafika Europe, Ana, Nashville Review, Exchanges, Neologism, Poems In Translation, Bombay Review, Pictura Journal, Blue Unicorn, Merion West, Reverie, Viridine Library, Rumen, Soul, Last Leaves Review, Lover’s Eye Press, Miserere Review, Consequence Forum, Jerry Jazz Musician and Antifa Literary Review. Before retirement, Brinkley taught literature at the University of Maine. He is the editor (with Keith Hanley) of Romantic Revisions. He is the author of Stalin’s Eyes and Gomorrah. A chapbook – America, America – and a book of images – Icons of War – will be forthcoming in the next few months.