by Olga Dugan
year after year I’d look into the mirror
content to see my wish for a strange
beautiful woman looking back at me
and just when I’d get the nerve
to kiss her with some pretty thing
like a dress to compliment lush curves
a scarf splashing colors—red
aqua—up to borders of silk or lace
that voice coming from I know not where
would clash against my innermost ear
words bearing insecurity self-doubt
lack of confidence of common sense
and that clinging cymbal would cling
cling cling until I saw my vision shrink
back to the stain I wouldn’t want
showing at work
but just today I stood
facing the face of a woman who knew
her pilgrimage through desert to promise
land had earned her ears to hear other
voices—from girl-child yearning to visit
the stars to lady tired of his punch
and whine to mother wrapping her fists
around a single income—inspirited
and urging do yourself a kindness
voices tender as sunset gilding a river
but sharp as the tips of juniper trees
voices the woman I am began to echo
try try being gentle to you she sang
and sang
until I saw her beauty
Olga Dugan is a Cave Canem poet. Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, her poems appear in many literary journals and anthologies including One Art, Ekstasis, Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith, Sky Island Journal, Channel (Ireland), Cathexis Northwest Press, Kweli, The Windhover, The Write Launch, Poems from Pandemia – An Anthology, Cave Canem Anthology: XIII, and Red Moon Anthology of Modern English Haiku. Articles on poetry and cultural memory appear in The Journal of African American History, The North Star, and in Emory University’s “Following the Fellows.”
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