You open the bedroom curtain
and it’s hallelujah outside. The ordinary patio gold-leaved, the cottonwood trees lit from within. For a moment you can withstand the splendor, accept the hallowed ground, believe in the glory of endings. Each morning I mourn my reflection by asking a metaphysical question: Who is this woman watching me wash a crumpled face and brush ragged teeth? Why do I wonder whether I am seeing a doppelganger goose or a transgander? Here’s the Siri-us hitch: I ask my reflection a question and I’m replied by a virtual bitch. “Your face would turn a thousand ships the other direction,” she observes with bemused affection. Some days I’m glad for our mourning conversation, when the image of a disheveled septuagenarian gives me a special dispensation with a yawn, “You will miss me when I’m gone.” |
AuthorNancy Harris McLelland taught creative writing, composition, and literature for over twenty years and Conducted writing workshops for the Western Folklife Center, Great Basin College , and the Great Basin Writing Project . An Elko County native with a background in ranching. McLelland has presented her "Poems from Tuscarora" Both at daytime and evening events at the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko. Her essay, "Border Lands: Cowboy Poetry and the Literary Canon" is in the anthology Cowboy Poetry Matters . Categories |