In contrast to the steady progress medical science has made over the centuries, including the rapid development of effective vaccines against COVID-19, the quality of women’s healthcare, especially that of women of color, lags behind, is not equitable when compared to men’s. Too often that’s because of stereotypes and prejudices about women, bred of ignorance and exacerbated by the injustice of entrenched privilege. You can hear the frustration and outrage in the voices of many of the poets in our Spring Issue, as well as a range of emotions and experiences related to the health of women.

As if the excruciating pain described in S. Marie Watkins’ “Migraines” were not enough, the speaker ends with a sharp rebuke of doctors who discounted the severity of her pain. This minimizing of a woman’s pain has been established by various studies as a frequent occurrence. Surely, it is assumed, women exaggerate their pain, suggesting a perverse assumption that women are by nature more emotional, or simply weaker. In “Hedy,” Allison Whittenberg concisely skewers the lingering stereotype that beauty and intelligence are mutually exclusive in women (note the clever wordplay in her title). Too often women still feel they are valued primarily for their appearance, or that they may need to hide or suppress their beauty to be taken seriously in professions traditionally (and still) dominated by men.

Other negative judgments regarding women, found in a psychiatric facility, comprise the content of Lake Angela’s, “The Professionals,” including the idea that men are innately superior doctors, and that the way women dress ‘invites” rape. These demeaning attitudes are countered by the powerful healing effects of the dance therapy sessions Angela led at the same facility, beautifully rendered in “The Women’s Waltz.” A similar pattern of suffering and then renewal through a redeeming embrace of self-worth can be found in the narrative arc of two poems of Doriana Diaz, “Brandwine No. 1” and “Home Sequence.” That men have the capacity to be sensitive and compassionate is testified to in David Banach’s “Children’s Hospital,” a reminder that men can be strong allies for women.

Whatever the issues presented by our poets, their use of language, poetic techniques, their stylistic precision or flourishes become the means by which they—and we—come to understand their experiences, feel their pain, confusion, or joy. Catherine Klatzker’s “Magnitude 7.1” uses concrete images of shattered objects strewn about a home and a neighborhood to sustain the metaphor of an earthquake. Though the metaphor’s meaning is open-ended intentionally—the upset could be the result of any physical or mental malady–Klatzker herself suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), the lifelong consequences of childhood sexual abuse. I strongly recommend her memoir You Will Never Be Normal, that recounts her determined, courageous facing up to and management of DID.

In several poems the level of artistic control reveals a writer’s ability to surmount personal suffering. Take for example, PS Cottier’s mastery of sound effects, pointing to the ironic repetition of “O” sounds in the word “Osteoporosis” and a connection to the deterioration of bone density as it appears on x-rays. While Jill Michele’s three poems dealing with a woman’s loss of an infant in childbirth use images that establish her deep sadness, in “Waiting Room Blues” she affirms the strength needed to acknowledge loss and move forward:

++++Remind yourself: this is just the allergist, dermatologist,
++++orthopedist—no OBGYN anymore, no high-risk specialist.
++++You aren’t pregnant with anything but grief.

And Dagne Forrest creates detailed imagery to express the feelings of the speaker in “The Art of Distraction.” She describes an octopus camouflaging itself while pursued by a shark, comparing it to busying herself with domestic chores in order to feel needed, while questioning its value as she ages, with death lurking. If only she could be needed just a little less, she states in another poem, “to be able to stand alone / in the circle of [her] own light.” (“Mother’s Heart as Incandescent Lightbulb”).

In reading carefully the work of the writers whose poetry appears in this tenth issue, you will be reminded that, beyond sexual or gender identity, the most inclusive and unifying nomenclature for all of us is “human.” The full implication of what ultimately unites us is beautifully expressed by Emily Hockaday’s macrocosmic perspective in “Red Shift”:

++++++++++++++++Everything
++++is moving at an alarming rate—
++++me and the rock we all
++++travel on.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

++++++++++++++++Even as cosmic
++++microwave radiation moves
++++through all of us. There are ways
++++to see it—these glowing moments
++++that even as you read,
++++get bigger and farther away.

So much is at stake in each person’s all too brief life. Now, we find ourselves called upon to witness the unjustified and ruthlessly brutal war against humanity in Ukraine—even as we celebrate the ascension of Judge Katanji Brown Jackson, whose ancestors were slaves, to the Supreme Court. The miracle of life gives us the opportunity to use time well by doing what we can to make each moment and each life matter. To live responsibly is to search for and recognize the truth, to speak it, and to act by its light—free from prejudice or malice or anger, with respect for all.

Steve Granzyk is the poetry editor of Please See Me.