POETRY FEATURED PROSE FEATURED ARTIST CONTRIBUTORS GUIDELINES ABOUT TIMELINE
Jean L. Kreiling


A Late Gesture

I held her hand a lot that final year,
as if to beg her not to disappear.
I'd learned the gesture in our distant past,
when I was little, but now I'd been cast
as caregiver, the one who said "I'm here"

and "I'll do that." Her usual good cheer
seemed sturdy—but was that just a veneer
beneath which doubts and worries had amassed?
I held her hand

to reassure her I'd always be near
to see her through her unacknowledged fear,
through pain and loss and change that came too fast,
through good times that we both knew couldn't last.
To hold age harmless, to hold back a tear,
I held her hand.


Foul-Weather Reunion
(Kennebunkport, Maine)


for Cam, Jane, Kate, Maureen, and Sally

As raindrops fell, the six of us shed years
to nurture our perennial connection;
grown women now, with children and careers,
we splashed through puddles and soaked up affection.
As fog insinuated its obscure
and shapeless drift into a dozen eyes,
we gladly saw the same amorphous blur
of past and present, dreams and compromise.
We walked the shore, ate lobster, and agreed
that we had weathered far worse than this rain;
wet shoes and dripping hair would not impede
reunion revels. Foggy days in Maine
made clear a truth on which our bond depends:
we've always been more than fair-weather friends.



































AUTHOR BIO

Jean L. Kreiling 's first collection of poems, The Truth in Dissonance (Kelsay Books), was published in 2014. Her work has appeared widely in print and online journals, and she is a past winner of a New England Poetry Club Award, the Great Lakes Commonwealth of Letters Sonnet Contest, the String Poet Prize, and the Able Muse Write Prize.

POETRY CONTRIBUTORS

Jane Blanchard
Lesley Clinton
Maryann Corbett
Barbara Lydecker Crane
Barbara Crooker
Midge Goldberg (Featured Poet)
Grace Marie Grafton
Jaimee Hills
Kathryn Hinds
Kathryn Jacobs
Jean L. Kreiling
Charlotte Mandel
Jennifer Davis Michael
Angela Alaimo O'Donnell
Leslie Schultz
Elizabeth Spencer Spragins
Marilyn Taylor
Cara Valle
Doris Watts

NEWS

The most recent addition to The Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline is Etel Adnan by Joyce Wilson.

Save the date: A Celebration of the Timeline reaching 75 essays. Lincoln Center, Fordham University (Sponsored by Fordham's Curran Center) Friday, October 20th, 7 p.m.

FEATURED ARTIST
Sacred Sisters is a collaboration between visual artist Holly Trostle Brigham and award-winning poet Marilyn Nelson, touching on such issues as gender and creativity, connections between the visual and literary arts, and religion and history. Brigham met Nelson at the all-girls prep school, the Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, in the Fall of 2012. Nelson was visiting the school as part of the Baldwin Write Now program and Brigham was a parent who co-founded the program and was her liaison for the day. They had the opportunity to visit and when Nelson asked about Brigham's work it started a conversation about nuns who were artists and writers. Brigham had already completed three paintings in her Seven Sisters II Series, later renamed Sacred Sisters.

ARCHIVES
LINKS
POETRY
32 Poems
The Academy of American Poets
The Atlantic
The Christian Science Monitor
The Cortland Review
Favorite Poem Project
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Light Quarterly
Modern American Poetry
Measure
The Poem Tree
Poetry
Poetry Daily
Poetry Society of America
Poets House
Raintown Review
Slate
String Poet
Valparaiso Poetry Review
Verse Daily
Women's Poetry Listserv
The Yale Review

CONFERENCES
AWP
Bread Loaf
Poetry by the Sea
Sewanee


PUBLISHERS

Barefoot Muse Press
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BOOKS
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OTHER RESOURCES
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Poets & Writers
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