Congratulations, Jeannine!

In case you didn't hear, Jeannine Hall Gailey has graduated with her MFA from Pacific University!

A terrific poet with or without a diploma...

Here's a poem from the graduate--

Wonder Woman Dreams of the Amazon


I miss the tropes of Paradise - green vines
roped around wrists, jasmine coronets,
the improbable misty clothing of my tribe.

I dream of the land of my birth. They named
me after their patron Goddess.
I was to be a warrior for their kind.

I miss my mother, Hippolyta.
In my dreams she wraps me tightly
again in the American flag,

warning me, “Cling to your bracelets,
your magic lasso. Don't be a fool for men.”
She's always lecturing me, telling me

not to leave her. Sometimes she changes
into a doe, and I see my father
shooting her, her blood. Sometimes,

in these dreams, it is me who shoots her.
My daily transformation
from prim kitten-bowed suit to bustier

with red-white-and-blue stars
is less complicated. The invisible jet
makes for clean escapes.

The animals are my spies and allies;
inexplicably, snow-feathered doves
appear in my hands. I capture Nazis

and Martians with boomerang grace.
When I turn and turn, the music plays louder,
the glow around me burns white-hot,

I become everything I was born to be,
the dreams of the mother,
the threat of the father.



(Published in American Poetry Journal, Spring 2005 and featured on
Verse Daily, March 1, 2005. Also included in the Pudding House chapbook,
Female Comic Book Superheroes, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2005.)


Order your copy of Becoming the Villainess here!


Congrats, J9!