ADOLESCENCE
If you like “Adolescence,” check out SER Vol. 27.2 for a second poem by Julia Hansen.
A chair like a scaffold
in the garden, the opalescence
of my skin, wet leaves like waves of eyelids
bowing & my red hair hidden & the sword
at his hip. What does it matter which buds were burgeoning.
I tell you I did not resist
until she held me. A lesson
on how to acquiesce.
When his sword sang through the air like a flash
& faded, it severed the silk from the cotton
threads. I wore black for my father & my eyes
aren’t like his. Around my ankles, such ribbons
of velvet, curling, that I cannot remember
which shape my lips were, but no one was laughing as
the sword swung, cutting. That sound is love
or power & you must know which.
Julia Hansen currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia; she will complete her MFA at the University of Virginia in May 2009. She currently serves as editor for Meridian, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in FREE VERSE, Prairie Schooner, and Shenandoah.
