stevens_0_0_0.xml | CONFLUENCE

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            <title>Prose Poems for Old Women</title>
            <author>May Stevens</author>
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               <resp>Editor (2024-Present)</resp>
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            <respStmt>
               <persName>Haley Beardsley</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2021-2024)</resp>
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               <persName>Lyndon Beier</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2023-Present)</resp>
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            <respStmt>
               <persName>Erica Delsandro</persName>
               <resp>Investigator, editor</resp>
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            <respStmt>
               <persName>Mia DeRoco</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2023-Present)</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Margaret Hunter</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2021-2024)</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Diane Jakacki</persName>
               <resp>Invesigator, encoder</resp>
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            <respStmt>
               <persName>Sophie McQuaide</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2021-2023)</resp>
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               <persName>Olivia Martin</persName>
               <resp>Editor, encoder (2021)</resp>
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               <resp>Editor (2022-2023)</resp>
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               <persName>Bri Perea</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2022-2023)</resp>
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               <persName>Carrie Pirmann</persName>
               <resp>Editor, encoder (2023-Present)</resp>
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               <persName>Valeria Riley</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2024-Present)</resp>
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            <respStmt>
               <persName>Ricky Rodriguez</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2022-2023)</resp>
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            <respStmt>
               <persName>Roger Rothman</persName>
               <resp>Investigator, editor</resp>
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            <respStmt>
               <persName>Valeria Riley</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2024-Present)</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Kaitlyn Segreti</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2021-Present)</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Maggie Smith</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2021-2024)</resp>
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            <respStmt>
               <persName>Maya Wadhwa</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2021-2023)</resp>
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            <respStmt>
               <persName>Kelly Troop</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2023-Present)</resp>
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               <persName>Lucy Wadswoth</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2022-Present)</resp>
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            <respStmt>
               <persName>Anna Marie Wingard</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2023-Present)</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Olivia Wychock</persName>
               <resp>Graduate Editor (2024-Present)</resp>
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            <funder>Bucknell University Humanities Center</funder>
            <funder>Bucknell University Office of Undergraduate Research</funder>
            <funder>The Mellon Foundation</funder>
            <funder>National Endowment for the Humanities</funder>
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               <name>Bucknell University</name>
               <address>
                  <street>One Dent Drive</street>
                  <settlement>Lewisburg</settlement>
                  <region>Pennsylvania</region>
                  <postCode>17837</postCode>
               </address>
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            <availability>
               <licence>Bucknell Heresies Project: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0
                  International (CC BY-NC 4.0)</licence>
               <licence>Heresies journal: © Heresies Collective</licence>
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               <analytic>
                  <title>Patterns of Communicating and Space Among Women</title>
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                     <publisher>HERESIES: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics</publisher>
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                        <address>
                           <name>Heresies</name>
                           <postBox>P.O. Boxx 766, Canal Street Station</postBox>
                           <settlement>New York</settlement>
                           <region>New York</region>
                           <postCode>10013</postCode>
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            <pb facs="https://leaf.bucknell.edu/sites/default/files/2025-02/heresies02_084.jpg" n="84"/>
            <head>Prose Poems for Old Women</head>
            <byline>May Stevens</byline>
            <div><ab>
            <title>Sitting Still</title>
            <lg>
               <l>Some people died who never died before she said</l>
               <l>They died iust now she said readine The Times</l>
               <l>Her skin was pink her flesh concealed the bones</l>
               <l>inside She pretended she was a chair</l>
               <l>hoping death would flash past sat still as a sofa</l>
               <l>A dress laid over two shoes neatly placed.</l>
            </lg>
            <title>Woman Waiting</title>
            <lg>
               <l>My mother sits at a window watching the field.</l>
               <l>When I come after six months, a vear, she waves.</l>
               <l>Moving from chair to bed to table she opens the</l>
               <l>door to the field, waits to receive words of praise</l>
               <l>and affection. The days of no figure crossing the</l>
               <l>field have moved to this moment. We are together.</l>
               <l>We drive off. She has nothing to say. She is humming.</l>
            </lg>
            <title>Alice Dick b. New Brunswick, Canada 1895</title>
            <lg>
               <l>As children in Chatham Alice and her sister Mary</l>
               <l>went for picnics on a boat down the River Miramichi</l>
               <l>as far as Bav de Vin and Burnt Church where the boat</l>
               <l>turned around. They caried sandwiches and lemon</l>
               <l>meringue pie homemade by Nelle Morn who hooked</l>
               <l>five or six rugs a vear, took in laundry, baked</l>
               <l>and sold fresh bread in herstore, made all the</l>
               <l>familv s clothes and delivered milk to her neishbors.</l>
               <l>Three of her four children were girls but they never</l>
               <l>learned to do allthe things their mother did. She</l>
               <l>had no time to teach them.</l>
               <l>Alice was in the second grade when Nellie Morn threw</l>
               <l>a log from the top of the woodpile into Alice's left</l>
               <l>eye. Her blue dress turned red.</l>
               <l>Alice was twelve when her father died. She went to work</l>
               <l>as mothers helper for the Snowballs and the Steeds</l>
               <l>who lived in the big house on the hill. Thev owned the</l>
               <l>pulp mill.</l>
               <l>Later she came to Boston, got a job in a Chinese</l>
               <l>restaurant where she waited on True N. Stevens half-</l>
               <l>owner of Stevens and Greene Groceries and his boy Ralph</l>
               <l>who flirted with her. Asked what A.D. on the bill stood</l>
               <l>for she said after dinner. They got married. She was</l>
               <l>twenty-four. I was the first of their two children</l>
               <l>the one who lived.</l>
               <l>She is nearly eighty now. She has a pink-gummed smile</l>
               <l>incredibly innocent and sweet without the least inflec-</l>
               <l>tion of twenty vears confinement in the back wards of</l>
               <l>state mental hospitals. The light in the one eye that</l>
               <l>sees has never gone out.</l>
            </lg>
                           <title>Old Woman Bathing</title>
            <lg>
               <l>Loosened strands slip down deep divided back.</l>
               <l>Buttocks shelfslides to creasing thighs. Knees</l>
               <l>keep a partial crouch. Belly slings body center</l>
               <l>forward over a hairless pouch. She lifts each breast</l>
               <l>soaping the smell of age. She (matter self-propelled</l>
               <l>mushrooms pink and lavender, lustful, greedy, feeding)</l>
               <l>steps into air, hands stroking space, trusting someone</l>
               <l>is there to towel her drv, pin remnant hair, give back</l>
               <l>her name, her watch, her storv. She loves being clean</l>
               <l>but who has time to wash her every day? Is she a baby</l>
               <l>with a future? She loves hair dresed but fears over</l>
               <l>handling may make it thin. Dampish stil, flushed,</l>
               <l>talced, her body blooming, she swings foot, hums</l>
               <l>nightgowned beside the bed, waits for milk and pills.</l>
               <l>Glasses folded under pillow, sheet clutched high,</l>
               <l>one hand slipped between her thighs, she sleeps a</l>
               <l>sleep she will denv, in tongues converses with</l>
               <l>familiars, unshareable. No she did not speak she lies</l>
               <l>keeping her secret garden, loving the long continuous</l>
               <l>dialog, absorbing, obsessing, warm and sweet as ex-</l>
               <l>crement newly made, unspeakable, but hers, and real.</l>
            </lg>               
            <title>Addie, Alice</title>
            <lg>
               <l>Aunt Addie went to the hospital for a three day checkup</l>
               <l>came out with a clean billof health rejoiced at eighty-three</l>
               <l>ay-yah she savs Maine voice unaided eyes <caesura/> family proud <caesura/>race proud</l>
               <l>discipline proud <caesura/>straight square proud <caesura/>spareness dryness proud</l>
               <l>awkward proud <caesura/>truth proud. <caesura/>Addie; <caesura/>You start out with nothing</l>
               <l>you end up with nothing. <caesura/>My traveling days are over. <caesura/>I</l>
               <l>remember Souza's band and Burton Holmes' lectures. <caesura/>In fact I</l>
               <l>heard Winston Churchill telling his experiences in the Boer War</l>
               <l>the winter of nineteen <caesura/>hundred and one. <caesura/>Making blouses for</l>
               <l>April <caesura/>pajamas for Ramona <caesura/>distant granddaughters <caesura/>putting up</l>
               <l>pears for the winter of nineteen hundred and seventy-two. <caesura/>Aunt</l>
               <l>Addie s house is bare of suffering as her face <caesura/> in which suffering</l>
               <l>would be an indulgence eves no feling showing <caesura/>asking Maine</l>
               <l>voice slightly rasped edges <caesura/>knowing but not dwelling <caesura/>what did</l>
               <l>you expect?</l>
               <l>In Istanbul a woman of one hundred and one is lifted out of bed</l>
               <l>into bed <caesura/>mind clear in a crooked cage <caesura/>telling how the sultan</l>
               <l>was deposed and another came in the palace.</l>
               <l>Mary had a sister Alice <caesura/>pleasingly plump <caesura/>white calves</l>
               <l>hairless armpits <caesura/>clear brow <caesura/>still eyes. Alice lost an eye</l>
               <l>when wood was thrown from the woodpile. <caesura/>Blood ran down her</l>
               <l>dress. Alice lost a son flu caried him off. <caesura/>Alice lost</l>
               <l>a daughter who married a Jewish artist. <caesura/>Alice lost a husband</l>
               <l>when she grew fat and mad. <caesura/>Twenty years after <caesura/>one-eyed</l>
               <l>burnt-out schizophrenic <caesura/>Alice sees three figures swarm through</l>
               <l>glass doors <caesura/>daughter <caesura/>husband <caesura/>her husband? <caesura/>son <caesura/>her son? <caesura/>to</l>
               <l>take her outside. <caesura/>She smiles <caesura/>says well declare <caesura/>gets up</l>
               <l>goes to the door <caesura/>where coat hat bag <caesura/>are hanging <caesura/>and turns</l>
               <l>ready.</l>
            </lg>
         </ab></div>
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              <back><p> May Stevens is a New York painter.</p></back>

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