Sarah Browning
Sarah Browning is the author of Killing Summer (Sibling Rivalry) and Whiskey in the Garden of Eden (The Word Works). Co-founder and past Executive Director of Split This Rock, the poetry and social justice organization, she now teaches with Writers in Progress. Browning received the Lillian E. Smith Award and fellowships from DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, VCCA, Yaddo, Porches, and Mesa Refuge. She holds an MFA in poetry and creative nonfiction from Rutgers Camden and lives in Philadelphia. More at www.sarahbrowning.net
Abecedarian for the Aging Female Body
Ask me about menopause. Why?
Because hardly anyone ever does,
causing men to look away and younger women to
dash their own hopes of
evading time and all of its
future-future wrinkle and wisdom-sag.
Go ahead, ask me:
Hot flashes in January
I mean, come on! I
just took off the sweater and the scarf
keep them here on the back of the chair
let them take a break ‘til I’m cold again.
Motherfuck! Cold again. Layer-layer.
Nobody asks because… boring?
Obvious? But if so, we’d know more,
perhaps. We wouldn’t have all these damn
questions – our beloved libidos that
roared like engorged rivers now little wee
streams, the universe again signaling
to any who pays attention, time’s
ultimate destination. Oh,
vanity! I hadn’t realized how you’d
upended me, sang to me in the
wonder of each lover’s arms. I’m
exactly where my body demands I be, in
your slippery, vain embrace,
zapped with a new hunger, a sweet heat.
