Jeannine Hall Gailey
Being female, I tend to write in the voices of female characters for the most part (though not always) I think in part because so many ancient myths lack a feminine perspective. Sure, female characters in myth are love interests and victims and even villainesses, but they rarely get much to say before the narrator plunges back in to the story of the male main characters. Does gender matter? Of course it does. It's hard to put ourselves in the story, without a little imagination. This is why I write in persona. In these particular poems, I wanted to help give the women of the Bible a few extra words of their own, a few extra minutes in the limelight. Mary, Jael, and Ruth's stories have captivated me since I was little. I hope I did them justice.
Magnificat
“My Soul Glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices…” Luke 1:46
I was not ready. I can say that now.
I wasn’t looking forward to the sticky blood,
the pain, and the sore nipples, things I’d heard
from my aunts and mother.
Not exactly a delight.
One night I lay me down to sleep
my pillow drowned me
the sheet twisted up
I woke up with all this light
But I wasn’t ready. I can say that now.
They say generations will call me blessed,
most beloved of God and men. But I
am lonely. In the long nights, my stomach hurts
and I turn and turn and turn. There is no one.
In my sleep, a man turns to me. He is bleeding.
I touch him and he rebukes me. Sometimes
there are visions, frightening: a lot of fire.
My fingers swelled. And always, in the back
of my mind, a sound of a child crying. When
he finally arrived I had already given him up.
That’s what the women in my family do;
when we are given gifts, we return them, smiling.
Ruth to Naomi, Afterwards
Ever since the night I crawled between his sheets
he hasn’t been the same. Oh, he’s kind,
he says the right things. I carry his last name
and his ring. When I rinse out my red hair,
he tells me to cover it.
I’m invited to dinner by his town’s women,
they ask me what it was like to be a whore,
all wide-eyed. They still refer to me as heathen.
Wasn’t I lucky to be here, they say, wasn’t I lucky.
To be traded for a shoe. To be supported, claimed.
I’ve been dreaming again of Moab, of your son,
my first love, the red fires of my country’s sun.
He bought me jeweled sandals, gold earrings.
He used to sing while he bent metal
in his shop, and I would go to the temple, carrying wine
My dear mother, marah, I am not bitter.
I am glad that you were able to come home
to these people, these dusty fields. I don’t mind the stares
so much anymore, don’t mind the lonely bed.
Only I miss my savage land, my savage tongue,
the savage heat, the sun, the rain, the hold
of more lenient gods, the younger, wicked me.
Blessed Among Women
When Sisera asked for water,
she brought milk and butter.
She covered him with blankets and
he lay down to sleep.
She felt his head softly,
moved it from her lap,
considered its heft:
careful, careful.
Her husband far away.
Sisera lies sleeping.
In the tent she gathers tools.
She touches his temple
with a nail, weighs the force
she will need to puncture it.
She raises her husband’s
hammer, brings it down.
He breaks beneath her like an egg.
She hears the voice of a mother crying;
a woman waiting for her son
who will not return home.
She goes out to meet her husband,
blood still on her hands, saying:
Come and see what I have done.
Watch how men have bowed
and fallen at my feet.
See why they will call me blessed.
Judges 5:24-27: “Most blessed of women be Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, of tent-dwelling women most blessed… where he sank, there he fell dead.”
Jeannine Hall Gailey’s first book of poetry, Becoming the Villainess, was published by Steel Toe Books. Poems from the book were featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac and on Verse Daily; two were included in 2007’s The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. She was awarded a 2007 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize for Poetry and a 2007 Washington State Artist Trust GAP grant. Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Columbia Poetry Review, and Ninth Letter. She volunteers as an editorial consultant for Crab Creek Review and currently teaches at the MFA program at National University.