Age-Based Connotations, and: In The Company of Women, and: Pro-Choice, and: Re-Vision

Abstract

Age-Based Connotations, and: In The Company of Women, and: Pro-Choice, and: Re-Vision Marjorie Maddox (bio) age-based connotations A different day and that phrase, “oldbitch” might not be synonymous with“crone,” the cunning and cruel who twistdreams into nightmares, reconfigureevery woman a day beyondfifty into Sleeping-Beauty-Gone-Bad-and-Cranky ready to poison thehappy post-haste. Forget charming royalty,it’s us we want, that deep-insidejoy that even (especially) nowkeeps constructing itself intoletters we won’t let a multitude ofmen— or other women— define.No. Those “of a certain age,” it’s time to claimour own connotations of “crone”:proud, experienced, wise, living fully.Question outside expectations andraise your writing fist high insolidarity, then, each dayteach by example thisuplifting of moniker into our ownversion of what it means to bewomen. With wrinkles or not, weeXpel preconceived notions ofyouth, gender, age. Approaching thezenith of life, we rejoice; we re-define. [End Page 208] in the company of women Always, they are surprisedby the boulder-sized heft of the hiddenbeneath the weight of my ordinary eyesthat smoke-signal they, too, will survivegive or take a decade or two; give or takethe unrelenting midnight whysthat unwind into others’ lives,the discovery of lifting,rock by rock, pebble by pebble,what once was thrown as “Victim!”but, now, weight-lifted together,becomes stone bridge, becomespath home. [End Page 209] pro-choice Better than any Whitman’s Sampler’sthirty pieces of diet betrayal,this flimsy Dunkin’ box hoardsplenty of greedy doughand jelly enough to overflowthe small belly of a See’ssweet cocoa concoction.Give me the cream and the swirl,the puff and the powder,the fruit and the glaze,the stretch-the-lips widebite into chocolate or cherrynot trapped in buckeye-sizedmelting morsels but expansivelyand inexpensively freedthrough the baker’s thirteengood-deal fried possibilitiesof choice after choice after choice. [End Page 210] re-vision I shift, turn my back to my favorite window—the one the robins and birches love— but still seeanother, straight shot across the cluttered housethat I am not cleaning now, busy as I am straighteningunruly syllables, about-facing them in this newnot beautiful direction. The sparrows squawk their distress.The neighbor’s cats, trespassing unseen, tread carefullyon patio pavers behind me. Perhaps. Perhaps not.Their paws as quiet as a keyboard turned off,as still as sleeping children at someone else’s immaculate house.Without my glasses, the distant window holds only blurof tree and green, the subtle possibilityof sight. The rain is at my back now. I smell itall the way to the new view. [End Page 211] Marjorie Maddox Marjorie Maddox, winner of the 2019 Foley Poetry Prize, professor of English and creative writing at Lock Haven University, and Sage Graduate Fellow of Cornell University (MFA), has published eleven collections of poetry, with more forthcoming, including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (2004 Yellowglen Prize; rerelease, 2018), True, False, None of the Above (Poiema Poetry Series, Illumination Book Award Medalist), Local News from Someplace Else (Wipf and Stock), Wives’ Tales (Seven Kitchens Press), and Perpendicular as I (Sandstone Book Award); the short story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite Press); several children’s books; Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (coeditor; Penn State University Press); Presence (assistant editor); and over six hundred stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. Currently, she and photographer Karen Elias are collaborating on several projects. For more information, please see www.marjoriemaddox.com. Copyright © 2021 Frontiers Editorial Collective, Inc