Two Poems by Jean Varda

by Jean Varda

Jean Varda started writing poetry when she was seventeen after recovering from a hospitalization for severe stress and diagnosed mental illness. Her first chapbook, “Universe Mirror”, was published in 1972 by Now Save the Dead Press. She followed this with the publication of four more chapbooks of poetry, three published by Sacred Feather Press including her most recent. “Oracle,” published in late 2023. She is from Cambridge Massachusetts where she performed her poetry in different venues with her mentor, Brother Blue. A well-known storyteller in Cambridge and Boston. She has enjoyed leading poetry writing groups in her home since 1971.

She focuses on the writing process with her workshop participants, not the final product.

She has been published in numerous poetry journals and also is a collage artist and writer of memoir and fiction.

Same Old Devil

You penetrated me

with your manhood,

breaking my world

like shattered glass,

heaving your hairy

chest against me,

scorning my existence

like crushed butterflies.

In that moment

my childhood ended,

I didn’t exist,

then you returned

with a different face,

a different story

and did me again.

I thought you loved me,

I thought you were an

angel come to rescue me

but all you were

was that same old devil

come back to hurt me.

I thought you were a love song

as you heaved yourself into me

and filled me with shame

and now I lie empty and wounded

and want to disappear.

---

Broken

My sister is glass

I am wire

The fire that burned her

burned me

the ice that froze my heart

froze hers

My sister is breaking down

I see parts of her

struggling to be whole

and I fall into sorrow

whose familiar arms

hold and soothe me

My sister is fine glass

like ice crystals

and snow

I am hardened fires

and blasted clay

that never breaks