Quarter, waning, full? Howling,
that’s how she brought me forth,
so I’m told. And the power went out,
due to the storm. Lights flicking on
and off to the hum of the hospital
generator. I couldn’t get away from torrent,
if I tried. So often I wish to walk naked,
in the grass, clothes like wave breakers
on my skin. It’s so that nothing makes sense,
unless it’s contested, my body at odds
with the sun shining, a peaceful day, my spirit averse
to calm. “What if you were your mother’s anger?”
a hippy with a dolphin tattooed around her navel
asked me when I was twelve. It had never
occurred to me before then, that it could work
like that. Being born for a purpose not your own.
Candace Angelica Walsh has work published by Cathexis Northwest Press, Ming Chuan University Press in Taiwan, Deluge Literary Arts Journal, the Journal of Latina Critical Feminism and forthcoming in others. She holds degrees in Mandarin, Political Science, and International Studies from California State University, Long Beach and is currently working on her first book length work of non-fiction based on the journey from an impoverished childhood to her travels around the world. Originally from Los Angeles, she currently resides and writes in Chicago.
House Journal 