Iron Woman
by Diane Glancy
published in her 1990 book by the same name
I knew I came from a different place,
a story cut apart with scissors.
I would find a piece of rust in the morning
or a shape in the field through a fog.
I would hear a broken language
as if spoken by a woman
with a bird’s nest on her head,
long pieces of iron welded for her buckskin.
She wears a mosquito mask,
a crooked twig for a nose.
Her teeth sewn together with close white threads.
I hear her small voice
from the bird’s nest on her head.
It once lived in a pile of fallen limbs & brush
hauled to the field to burn after an ice storm.
Her voice rises in the trail of smoke
& mixes with mine in air.
It takes a while to speak with these two voices
as it takes a while to walk on two feet
each one going the other way.
