Poem by Charlene Moskal & Art by Larissa Boni

Minnewaska

Our path leads through woods
thick with the spice of damp earth
and the swish-sway sound of
pine needles underfoot –
the expectations palpable.

We come ready to pay homage,
reveal ourselves as unformed prayers,
carry little more than a towel
to wrap around newly fleshed hips
our youth eager for the day

Naked on flat rocks
we are odalisques, a harem –
the sun burrows into skin
turns our whiteness
the red of wild strawberries.

Clear as sheets of new ice
cold spring fed mountain water
held in a white marble bowl
beckons, echoes the color of sky
opens below like a hungry mouth

that waits to ravage our bodies
with raised goose bumps
and the possibility of sex
even as the scent of copperheads
rises from their nests along the waterline.

Minnewaska

Our path leads through woods
thick with the spice of damp earth
and the swish-sway sound of
pine needles underfoot –
the expectations palpable.

We come ready to pay homage,
reveal ourselves as unformed prayers,
carry little more than a towel
to wrap around newly fleshed hips
our youth eager for the day

Naked on flat rocks
we are odalisques, a harem –
the sun burrows into skin
turns our whiteness
the red of wild strawberries.

Clear as sheets of new ice
cold spring fed mountain water
held in a white marble bowl
beckons, echoes the color of sky
opens below like a hungry mouth

that waits to ravage our bodies
with raised goose bumps
and the possibility of sex
even as the scent of copperheads
rises from their nests along the waterline.

Charlene Moskal is a teaching artist with The Alzheimer’s Poetry Project under the auspices of the Poetry Promise Organization of Las Vegas. She is a visual artist, a performer, a voice for NPR’s Theme and Variations, as well as a writer. She has been published in numerous anthologies, magazines, and e-zines, most recently in Connecticut River Review, Oyez Review, Sandstone & Silver; an Anthology of Nevada Poets and Other Worldly Women. She is in her seventh decade, and likes laughter and coffee ice cream with hot fudge sauce.
Larissa Boni’s art stems from her desire to explore areas of her experience that she was unable to put into words or associate with a direct feeling or emotion. Since growing roots in Seattle, her art has expanded into 3d – incorporating basic carpentry and spray paints, but keeping photography as the heart center of all of her work.  “Limitless I & II”  (digitally manipulated photography) seeks to portray the transforming female form from the societal placed “limit” into free forms of “limitless” potential.