See Below for Information about Cass
Portrait of a Woman, Mid-Fall
First Stanza
Today she decides to be a dancer
She lies in bed to an urgency of silence
**
A certain twirling motion feels engaging
The morning turns when her lover isn’t here
**
If he ever moves out, she’ll think about getting a dog
Being a woman means needing a little protection
**
She gets a little anxious when he travels
The dog will make her feel safer living alone
**
Some women she knows have lived along for a long time
They’ve longed for love
She’s had lots of love, too much of it disquieting
She’s longed for solitude
Are all women miserable, she wonders
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Cass Donish was born and raised in the Greater Los Angeles area, and now lives in Columbia, MO, teaching English and Creative Writing at the University of MO. Their work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, The Gettysburg Review, Guernica, The Iowa Review, Poem-a-Day, Vice, and elsewhere. The entire poem whose excerpt is above appears in The Year of the Femme, Cassie Donish, University of Iowa Press.