Research: Journals
The Journal
Issue 32.1
Solar Plexus
by Julie Sheehan
Inner sun, hoodwinker, hoarding your crippling
springs in abominable cavities: yellow
your color is yellow, is twirlybird, wherewithal
swelter and swollen, conception inside me
as eggs dropped through chutes in a time kept obscurely:
your lunatic counterweight silvering, ceasing
to heal me, to whole me, to render me thus
had I kept to myself: you perplex me, old heliotrope,
pulling a shadow and pooling it noonward
one day in a bedroom, my amber limbs waning:
he brewed me, he bruised me, all boon and all boothale,
I brooded and knew what it was to draw breath,
my third chakra, my manpower, excess of energy:
now I grow big in devotion to mirrors,
reflecting on closets of clothes that don't fit
till I turn to the healing arts: cassia, peppermint,
lemongrass, thyme and advice from a guru:
"For the bully, the judge, for the master of nothing
who harries your heartbeats, you treat him with violets
followed by one brief lacuna of yellow."
