after Anne Sexton
Some women rent cabins.
It’s another kind of solitary craft; it has structure,
a purpose, an off-kilter form.
The walls are mud and mindful of hands.
See how she stokes the stove all day,
relentlessly urging heat.
All others have been banished; outside, the black cat
curls like an obsidian shell on the sisal mat.
A woman is her own snow.
That’s the storm inside.
Virginia Barrett’s books include Crossing Haight (forthcoming, 2018) and I Just Wear My Wings. Barrett is the editor of two anthologies of contemporary San Francisco poets including OCCUPY SF—poems from the movement. Her work has most recently appeared in the Writer’s Chronicle, Narrative, Roar: Literature and Revolution by Feminist People, Ekphrastic Review, Weaving the Terrain (Dos Gatos Press), and Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice (University of Arizona Press). She received a 2017 writer’s residency grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of Taos, NM. Her chapbook, Stars By Any Other Name, was a semi-finalist for the Frost Place Chapbook Competition sponsored by Bull City Press, 2017. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
