I am drawn to fat clay figures, Venus of Willendorf types,
though a squatting woman, thick knees and folding stomach,
tiny as my thumbnail, will do. And so will beak-nosed
black-trimmed elongated figures with tiny, pointed breasts.
I imagine my last years spent forming thousands
of female forms. I’d do this, not because I have loved only
women.
Today a new form catches me, this barely molded
clutch of dirt displayed with cartonnages and mummies,
typed label informing, “this figurine would have been watered
during funerary rites and placed in the tomb to facilitate
resurrection.” Embedded in my offerings will be seeds
of morning glories for mothers long forgotten,
of African violets for slave women pulled
from their children, desert roses for wives abandoned.
Published in White Pelican Review