Unprinted
Jean M. Hendrickson, poetry
Jean M. Hendrickson, in her own words, "is a beach bum in Ocean View who no longer has time for the rigors of 8 to 5, and would just as soon be poor as a sea gull, than return thereto." Her poetry poetry has been published in The Powahatan Review, Crone Chronicles, Beloit Review, Moondance, and Port Folio Weekly; her prose in The Daily Press, Reader's Digest,and The Powhatan Review.
Altered States
The jazz, the beat, the rhythm were missing.
Her familys song was the clash of cymbals,
a cry for water in an arid night,
a House of Horrors
where everyones transgressions
roared around a corner
and exploded in her face.
She lashed herself to the mast of asceticism
to keep from hosting a Bacchanal
and everyone was real but her.
Her inner lives were faces on a Totem Pole;
she was never sure who she was until she spoke.
Her heart was muffled;
her mind the keeper of secrets,
she was the glue,
the fixer, the go-between
her mouth always open, her eyes sewn shut,
a machine in her head cranking out mea culpas
while white blossoms turned to fruit
and bruised fruit fell from the tree.
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10,000 Fools in Paradise
When women sit in coffee-scented rooms
and sing their secrets,
joy and pain form ribbons
that knit them each to each,
and they learn to love themselves
for who they are:
creamy roses, thorny cactus,
wildflowers in a Mason jar.
Ideas circle in the air,
touch their words with mercy
and you can hear their lives croon
like wind in the pines,
the sound of feathers settling.
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