The Whirlwind Review
Issue 1


Table of Contents
More Poetry
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Nancy Gustafson

A Poem
or a hair shirt

Words and phrases
flit through her mind
at inopportune times,
in waiting lines
at stop signs

are scratched
with a dull lead
onto grocery tabs
and scraps ripped
from old envelopes

to be stored
like roses pressed between pages,
sacred tears in a glass vial,
fingernail clippings boxed in cedar,
hair pulled from a brush and braided

until that golden time
carved from disorder when she
crumbles rose petals, pours out
her tears, shakes free her nails,
unbraids her tresses

and kneels before
the loom of the Spirit
who dwells within
to weave a poem, or
heaven forbid, a hair shirt.





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