donna hill

 

Designed to Heal

The tears start to fall almost before her story
begins. She reluctantly smiles through them,
Damn, I thought this could be the one, the time
I‘d share without crying.


Her pain is sprawling, though etched also
in a kind of buoyancy, a humor designed to heal.

She’s 25, and four years ago was diagnosed cold
and clinically as the scratchy tissue-papered
bed she’d sat on,

                    waiting.

Only 50% die from it—
Stay as long as you need.


The door closed behind him.

Weary of small town gossip and being labeled the
AIDS girl, she’s moved to the city. A new set of friends
are her family now. She has learned all too well it only
takes one. Has lived the cliché of searching for love
in all the wrong places, then blundered through
bouts of denial and reckless destruction.
These days when love seeks her, she resorts to
sabotage. Better to push him away before he decides to go.

In his place she tells her story over and over to anyone who
dares to hear. For youths too cocky to listen— she’ll
threaten to dress the dildo— with her mouth.

Living on disability pension is far from luxurious,
she wraps up, but re-entering the work force?

Try explaining where you’ve been
the last four years.

 

It’s As If Love

Were now coming to us
in as many different languages
as inhabit creation

As if we have taken this poem
of life and love
and together, translated it into Spanish
or Greek perhaps
then back into English
where we think we can at last
comprehend

Yet never truly reaching
that fullness of bloom
that sharpness of edge
where time inevitably
has to fall away
drifting

It’s as if we are now witness
to a more vivid, intricate
language of love
as it transcends itself into one
of sun spotted meadows
trickling brooks and streams
Carolina lilies
and fox tailed grasses swaying
in the breeze

This language of eyes
meeting and holding on
lingering
like the brilliance of a smile
wetness of a shimmering tear
or bodies that touch
with the thrust of nature
yet so tenderly

That in those delicate spaces between
this silence embellished in sweet reverence
could speak more words than could ever be heard
or possibly understood

* Appeared in the anthology, “UNO,” by Comrade Press

 

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Donna Hill

     Donna Hill lives in British Columbia, Canada with her three sons. She has been writing poetry since 1998, drawing much of her writing style for realism from life around her, her family, and work as a child educator. She is a part time university student earning her Batchelor of Arts in English and Creative Writing. Donna is also co-creator and poetry editor of Erosha, an online literary journal of the erotic. Her poems have appeared internationally, in such issues as Teak Round Up, One Dog Press, Poems Niederngrasse, Poetry Motel, Peshekee River Poetry, and Slipstream, and have also been published by numerous literary webzines. "My Hands Write When I Need Them To," took first prize in Comrades first annual poetry contest in the UK, and was invited into their anthology entitled, "Uno," 2002. Clean Sheets Press has published her poem, "Carolina Rain" in their latest anthology, December 2001. Donna's poetry site can be found at www.donnamichelehill.com.
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