Wonder Wife Wednesday: Poetry Corner

So, among all her other talents, Wonder Wife is an occasionally-published poet. We have sometimes called her the Blood, Birds, and Buddha poet, since so much of her writing and art is woman-centered and uses a lot of specific imagery. Here's one that's online in the Licton Springs Review.

She's on a bit of a sabbatical this summer from her healing practice and has been exploring how she is going to integrate her creative pursuits into the rest of her enterprises. The other night, she asked me for a poem prompt, just so she could stretch some creative muscles. I wanted to give her something that would bridge our chosen genres, so I said Supergirl.

Turns out Wonder Wife knew nothing about Supergirl, so I had to explain the story - the real one, of course - about how Kara Zor-El was in Argo City when Krypton exploded, and the whole city floated off in one piece, and how Kara floated through space for a while until she, too, was sent to Earth in a rocket. I showed her the cover of Action Comics #252 and explained how Superman stuck her in an orphanage to protect his secret identity. She asked me how old Supergirl was; I said she was about fourteen or so. Wonder Wife seemed taken by the idea of this young girl growing up on a tiny fragment of an exploded planet.

A little while later she sent me this:

SUPER GIRL

had no sex education like I did –
no old textbook diagrams of fallopian tubes,
or tampons dipped in blue-tinted water
to see them puff and float like sacred specimens.  

Instead, Argo drifted in space, detached
from its Kryptonian world, a chunk of planet
to fend for itself, just as Super Girl did,
ripening without notice, alone to witness
her first drops of woman blood
staining her muslin dress, wondering  

if this was the end, a disease just as cruel
as Krypton’s demise… 

… but then she saw a similar stain
on her girlfriend’s dress, and then another
and another, and she knew that something
miraculous had happened – like Krypton,
she had the power to bleed and survive.