Julie Anne Phillipps

Writing Portfolio

"That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment. " 
Dorothy Parker, 'But the One on the Right,' in New Yorker, 1929

Lawn Mower's Lament

Bright flowering bikini on Woman
Clothed in hard leathered Flesh.
Age sagging once pliant Breasts.
Frail skin wilts on brilliant painted Nails.
Long past her time as Maiden or Mother,
Youthful allusion taints my lusterless Crone

Delusion relinquishing glorious Crone.
Sad, artful, dispassionate Woman
Forgetting earth’s ancient Mother,
She wages dark battles against dying Flesh
With manicured, hard tapered Nails,
I am led, as she damns her furrowed Breasts.

She demands a return to immature Breasts.
Cringing she fears herself as a Crone,
Lashing at withered skin with gel harden Nails,
Denying the soul of the Wise Woman,
She rages against her Declining Flesh.
Renouncing our movement past Maiden and Mother.

Chasing a graceful grand Mother,
Exultant in soft fallen Breasts,
Matron bold in a body of Flesh.
Beseeching, each turning Wheel, Ishtar, a Crone!
Respecting the passage; Maiden, Mother, old Woman,
Ancestral Woman charming in soil stained Nails.

Chipped and rippled Nails,
On an earth bound Mother.
Radiant matriarch completion of Woman.
Dreaming against her soft warm Breasts,
Appealing, each turning Wheel, Astarte, a Crone!
Matrilineal knowledge of mellowing Flesh

She honors her temporal Flesh,
Feels nature surging in shriveled Nails.
Seeing her spirit she warms to her Crone.
Hearing earth summons; her Ancient Mother,
Desires again to suckle on great muddy Breasts.
Imploring, each turning Wheel, Innanna, a Woman!

Softening Flesh of a Venerable Mother,
With dirt caked Nails and denim clad Breasts,
Ceres! for me a wizened old Crone, an actualized Woman