Bridget Zinn -Author of Poison

I didn’t know the late Bridget Zinn personally, but I was moved by her story. You can read about it in words better than mine from the Chicago Tribune.

Ms. Zinn’s first book Poison was published this last week. She died of colon cancer at 33 (the same disease that took my husband’s mother at nearly the same age), before the publication of her first book. In support of her first book, we were asked to post about firsts in our own lives.

 I thought about returning to poetry – breaking through a long drought (ten years) to start writing it again. It felt like a first – perhaps the first time you see an old friend after years and years of separation.

 Thanks for stopping by to read my poem about firsts. If you can, please buy Bridget Zinn’s book Poison.

the first

 

like a needle you draw me

through the cloth.

like a needle, i know

how love is made.

nothing is new.

i feel the spinner’s hands

i know her age

she cannot hide it.

i feel the weaver’s breath

bent to the work

the knots took everything.

it is written there

in the lines of her mouth,

in the cloth itself.

like a needle you draw me

to the skin.

i know how it is made.

i know it is human.

nothing is new.

still we press against it

- eyes closed –

it feels like the first

sliding through our hands

silk, water

only cloth.

younger poem

i give you this love
as round as my thigh
- i give it to you
like bread between hands
like a woman.
i give you this love from the socket
of my hip
not from my heart
but from my heel
crushed hard against stone.

nights

there are nights
when i can think
when i can write the words
he never loved me.
if it is written
it must be true
if it is true, there can be
no argument
and i am weary of argument.
there are nights when i remember
in the silence
how you opened my chest
and my heart
fell apart
like the seeds of a
pomegranate.
you never loved me.
its written in books
in my poems.
i write the words.
i write the words
for the nights i can think.