A Certain Ache

A Certain Ache is a collection of poems in women’s voices. Over half of them are historical women, including such legends as Frida Kahlo, Hedy Lamarr, and Amelia Earhart, as well as lesser-known women with important things to say. The historical women have all been well researched and you will find short, relevant biographies of them in the back of the book.

In A Certain Ache, Bonnie Wehle amplifies a chorus of women’s voices, revealing a shared daring and desperation in the interior lives of artists, scientists, explorers, and those without fame. Wehle’s speakers transmute their griefs into art and discovery, finding that what they make can hold, but not undo, loss. Without denying suffering, Wehle proclaims these women’s drive to create and to endure. Julie Swarstad Johnson, author of Pennsylvania Furnace.

The Pretender  

When he said, So, tell me about yourself, 
I turned to make sure my shadow
was still attached, flat, colorless, vaguely
body shaped. Like a paper doll. 

My skin seems to stretch more tidily
around the bones of others than it does my own.
My thoughts cradle better in someone else’s brain,
spring more easily from someone else’s mouth.
I prefer to write in someone else’s voice.

You may hear me from the next room
reciting lines assigned to the dead or distant,
searching for myself on random gravestones,
in portraits painted with raucous colors
I recognize from somewhere.

Through a crack in my wall 
you can watch me cut dolls from cardboard, 
shut them in a drawer,
and double lock the door behind me.

La Impostora

Cuando él dijo: Háblame de ti,
yo volteé para confirmar
que mi sombra
aún estaba adherida,
plana, incolora,
forma vaga de mi cuerpo.
Como una muñeca de papel.

Mi piel parece estirarse exacta
alrededor de otros huesos.
Mis pensamientos anidar un cerebro distinto,
brotar sin esfuerzo por otras bocas.
Yo prefiero escribir en voces ajenas.

Es posible
que desde la habitación contigua
me escuches
recitando líneas asignadas
a los que murieron,
a los que se fueron,
buscándome entre las lápidas del azar,
o en retratos pintados con colores ruidosos
que apenas reconozco.

A través de una grieta en mi pared
vas a descubrirme
cortando muñecas de cartón,
encerrándolas en gavetas
para luego atrancar la puerta
detrás de mí.

(Traducción por Ana C Blum y revisión por Kelsi Vanada)

Other Poems by Bonnie Wehle

Longevity 

(After Kay Ryan) 

Sorrow makes 
a habit of itself. 
Meaning 
tears escape 
no matter 
how often 
you dry them. 
Meaning 
memories intrude 
no matter how far 
you try to push 
them away, 
no matter 
how often 
you try to shut down 
the heart, 
how many times 
you turn the pictures 
to the wall, 
close the albums 
after pulling out  
that single photo, 
to test what 
aloneness can endure. 

(After Kay Ryan, ”That Will to Divest” in The Best of It, Grove Press, 2010) 

Second Place Winner, Short Free Verse, Arizona Poetry Society Annual Contest, 2020 

Published in Sandcutters, 2020 

Boxes 

Black, tin, with Tole-painted flowers, 
the container had lived on his dresser 
as long as I can remember,  
its contents unknown to us children, 
though we were sure it concealed treasure. 

After he died, the box came to me. 
Its top distorted from years of use, 
I wrested it open to discover 
safety pins, pencil stubs, 
buttons lost from long-ago shirts. 

We have them don’t we? 
Boxes of life’s relics, tokens 
real or imagined, worthless or worthy 
that we pick up and dust now and then, 
to reassure ourselves.  

After Laure-Anne Bosselaar, “Stamp Box” in Small Gods of Grief, BOA Editions, Ltd., 2001.Page Break