May 13, 2009 / Creative Writing
I watched Rebel Without a Cause on TV late one college night when I learned …
Parthenogenesis:
when a female snake
conceives without male contact.
Most articles also give the definition
(virgin birth, in Latin)
since it’s such a heavy word.
Still, not even
all those stolid syllables
or the beat it takes my brain
to match them to their meaning
can keep away the dizziness
that hits me as I’m trying
to hold it in my mind:
how she swelled past
any logic we’d prescribe,
speaking life into herself,
body fluent in a language
none of us can know.
About the Author
Christina Lee Barnes
Christina Lee Barnes is a poet and teacher from Los Angeles who now lives in Seattle with her husband and one-year-old son. Barnes is a Writers in the Schools (WITS) teacher for Seattle Public Schools and works in the education department at Seattle Pacific University. Her publications have been featured in the Seattle Times, Prairie Schooner, Stirring, Cream City Review, Freezeray, and Tin House online.
Susan Lilley
May 13, 2009 / Creative Writing
May 13, 2009 / Creative Writing
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May 3, 2011 / Creative Writing
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Mary Van Denend reflects on Simone Weil’s “Waiting for God,” a seminal piece on Weil’s understandings of grace, affliction, and our “sacred longing” for God.