Adrienne Stevenson
Bridge club
eight women meet for fifty years skip dinner so we can feast on finger foods provided by each in rotation, every other Thursday we draw for partners divide into groups of four spend a few hours bidding and playing our hands clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades with no-trump highest rank—bidding systems come and go, so do players but table-talk always continues now age begins to take us some with fading memory others with trembling hands we persist, as good sports should no competition here for master’s points no grand finesses, no money changes hands a purely social event between women we revel in our old girls’ club High Maintenance You’re in the high-risk group, they said first in line when vaccinations come for everything from shingles to pneumonia and now coronavirus, but enough of that you need to get things checked, they said blood pressure, weight, hearing, vision make sure your working parts still work but don’t worry that things might go wrong just like a car that’s spent too much time in a body shop, my structure has produced signals that I can’t ignore, but can’t get help for either, in a collapsing health-care system why didn’t you ask about this before? I tried, but you weren’t listening She’s just a scatty old woman nothing to think about but aches my maintenance requirements may be high but no virtue lies in lengthy endurance early treatment application more beneficial than attempts to repair widespread decay Incongruity Women Making Shells, by Mabel May (Canada) 1918 women, making shells, in 1918 the ultimate irony, while the men they cared for drowned in sodden trenches or fell like modern Icaruses from fragile kites in a war that glorified empire bent to their tasks, did they ever look up from the factory floor, and wonder whose brother, son, father, husband, beau might be obliterated by their labours’ products and whether women on the other side did the same? a war that barely stopped before its successor began and kept on erupting long after, like pox or pimples on diseased skin, in places not deemed worthy of support against the despoilers of their substance in which women, as always, had the worst to bear Adrienne Stevenson (she/her) lives in Ottawa, Ontario. A retired forensic scientist, she writes in many genres. Her poetry has appeared in more than forty print and online journals and anthologies in Canada, the USA, the UK, and Australia. When not writing, Adrienne tends a large garden, reads voraciously, and procrastinates playing several musical instruments. |