Four Women
by Liz Dolan

Sister Jose Marie Conducts a Retreat

Behind her on the altar 
hangs a blue dress 
speckled with pink buds 
a duplicate of what 
she is wearing. 

Wash and wear, she says. 
As both Cherokee Indian 
and professed nun, she lives 
simply, gives everything away 
gets it all back.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Speaks of Spirits

I can hear them thumping 
the accordion under the pleated folds 
of the muslin-draped table, the shrill syllables 
of the dead boy. White as snow 
a hand rises and sinks, rises and sinks, 
creeps over the edge and crowns me 
with laurels. Is it Dante? 

Robert never believes they speak to me 
and my dearest Sophie, who gives me 
Damascus slippers, a Holy Sepulchre rosary, 
a portrait of me he scorns,
memento mori from the thorny white rose.

She is my medium. Say it is 
my morphine. Say I do not fly 
on pinions of my own. On the road to Rome 
gardenia-soaked spirits rattled in our carriage. 

I tell you after Robert cast the withered wreath 
from our portico onto the cobblestones below 
an icy mulberry vest has buttoned my soul. 

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson Fancied White

No matter how the world twirled about
“the Squire’s half-cracked daughter”
her mind crushed glass
as she whistled down the moon each eve
and sewed seed pearls 
into her white cotton dimity
layering light so purely her words shook. 

Unity Mitford, English Aristocrat, Remembers Hitler

I called him Du, Wolf.
I was his Walkyrie pearl. 

I shadowed him, thrummed my fingers
on the table in the osteria. Trembling

I dropped a spoon or my purse until he nodded—
his wonderfulness radiated. So what—

his men forced Jews to crop grass
with their teeth. What he did

for the Deutschland! Behind him I sat 	
at Breslau as a hundred thousand 

goose-stepped before him 
under a tyrant sun. Once I sent

an arthritic Jewess saddled with bundles
in the wrong direction. Winston, my cousin,

declared war. By the River Isar
I swallowed my swastika,

embedded a bullet in my skull 
with my pearl handled pistol.

Du paid my bills, sent me
a Christmas tree tinkling with Bavarian chimes.

Now neighbors grouse over my flourless cakes 
beaten with dozens of rationed eggs 

and my pet rat I ferry to dances in my purse, 
my rhinestone tiara askew on my head.

---

Liz Dolan’s poetry collections include A Secret of Long Life from Cave Moon Press and They Abide from March Street Press. Among her many awards are the Nassau Prize, which she has won for both poetry and fiction, and the Best of the Web. She has also received fellowships from the Delaware Division of the Arts, The Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Martha’s Vineyard Writers’ Residency. A proud grandmother of nine, Liz lives in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, surrounded by her posse.

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