Leper Woman

At first I thought an iron kettle’s fall
caused my toe to prickle
slow to heal, though feeling deep
and strong has always been my norm

then the other foot numbed too
with inner deadness climbing.
Who had I kissed beside you
back from the Crusades
unscathed by infidels
and too soon turning cheek?
Now all will know
who I lay with.

I washed rash and crust,
soaked the skin’s new valleys
in marrow soap and hind’s milk,
tried betony, balsam, oak rind,
adder steeped in leek
and urine of goat to halt
this year by year abbreviation.

Even before the first finger fell
my face grew porridge thick,
voice harsh as fate
and legs twisted.
The priest took glee
at sin’s reward
and flesh’s putrefaction.
You and he agreed on banishment.

So now from one old cup
I drink, in my own cloak hide
and no one hold,
these words a warning bell
before me, this paper
a begging bowl.

Who else recalls my wholeness?
Tell how it was, long passing sir,
when our bodies bloomed
when your touch was mercy
and mine pure grace,
when feeling was how we were
hands and mouths together.
What you ate is gone,
but less of me feels
and feels more.

Touch me again
though my body was wax
and love is the sun.

63 Pages
$15
isbn 1-882983-86-6

Here, as in her previous volumes, Joanne Lowery explores a complex psychic terrain, a dark meridian where opposites—dream and reality, the personal and the historical—merge or clash in dramatic and often unpredictable ways. Extraordinarily varied in tone and setting, these poems “tend the coals/where all that’s human blazes;” which is to say, they concern memory and persistence, the consciousness of loss at the heart of experience. Though clear-sighted and rigorously unsentimental, in the end Leper Woman affirms the vitality and resourcefulness of the imagination; as in the whimsical “After Jupiter,” where the speaker emerges from her local hardware store to discover “a dozen moons/in twelve new corners of the sky.”Lowery remains one of the most exciting and compelling poets of her generation. Hopefully this remarkable book will win for her the larger audiences she so justly deserves.
—Max Westler
Director of Writing Programs
St. Mary’s College
Notre Dame, Indiana

Joanne Lowery’s poems are by turns humorous, heartbreaking, horrifying, and absolutely unsemtimental. They run the imaginative gamut from the historical to the autobiographical, often inhabiting a distinct realm between the two. She is one humdinger of a poet.
—Richard Newman
Editor, River Styx

Joanne Lowery’s poems have appeared in many literary reviews including Spoon River Poetry Review, Laurel Review, Northwest Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Parting Gifts, Poem, and River Styx. Her previous collections are Coming to This (Fithian Press), Corinth (University Editions), Heroics (Avisson Press), and Double Feature (Pygmy Forest Press). She lives in Michigan.