Marjorie Rommel lives in Auburn, WA. about six blocks from where she was born. A newspaper reporter & editor for many years, she teaches creative writing at Highline Community College, Midway, Washington, and Pierce Community College, Puyallup, Washington, and operates a public/media relations firm. She is co-founder of The Northwest Renaissance, Poets, Performers & Publisher, Inc., a 25-year-old nonprofit literary coalition, and coordinates the NWR Poets at the Kent Canterbury Faire reading series, now in its 15th year. She was a Willard R. Espy Literary Foundation resident in 2000, and an Adam Family Foundation White Bridge Traveling Fellowship recipient in 2001. Marjorie's poetry, short fiction and literary nonfiction have appeared in Vagabond, Arnazella's Reading List, A Blackberry Sun, Spring Rain, The Clearing, The Duckabush Journal, Signal International, Mr. Cogito, Stone Drum, Images, The Written Arts, Pacific, The Padilla Bay Poetry Anthology (Washington State Department of Ecology, 1994), Dark Orchid, (Inkpot Press1993) Writer's Northwest Handbook (Media Weavers 1991), Voices in the Trees (Evergreen Press 1989), Ghost in the Garden (book & audio tape with original music, produced by GodZillah Gospel Press 1995), A Loving Voice Vol. 2 (The Charles Press, 1995), & others. |
A journal on the writer's role in society edited by esther altshul helfgott Contributors are invited to address the question: What is the writer's responsibility to self & society? |
Marjorie Rommel The Grandmothers Go to War for Katherine We are the strong ones. Bumptious, blue-haired, rip-handed and dangerous in defense of our grandchildren, we are an untapped Power. We are furious, disciplined, manipulative, sly -- lessons learned in a half century of service to quarrelsome men -- far more gimlet-eyed than the children you would send off to war, leaving us to keen at night, and we won't have it! We will not lie quiet while generations are turned in a moment to scattered ash. We have nothing to lose but our grandchildren: Send us. Send us instead. We will shroud ourselves in burkhas, cast down our angry eyes, pack ferocity around our ample waists and under our lymphedemic arms, strap books to our cottage cheese buttocks, poems to our fulsome thighs. Unobtrusive as ghosts, we will slip over the false borders and into the strongholds of those who would enslave us. We are old hands at this. Black ships laden with riches, we will bring to our sisters the perfume of knowledge. We will bring them bright mirrors to show them their beauty. We will show them our strengths, to share with their daughters. We will show them our scars, and invite them to join us, for this is a holy war fought by all women. Together, we are invincible. In the names of our grandchildren, we are relentless and unafraid. copyright2001 Marjorie Rommel |
A journal on the writer's role in society edited by esther altshul helfgott Contributors are invited to address the question: What is the writer's responsibility to self & society? |
Marjorie Rommel lives in Auburn, WA. about six blocks from where she was born. A newspaper reporter & editor for many years, she teaches creative writing at Highline Community College, Midway, Washington, and Pierce Community College, Puyallup, Washington, and operates a public/media relations firm. She is co-founder of The Northwest Renaissance, Poets, Performers & Publisher, Inc., a 25-year-old nonprofit literary coalition, and coordinates the NWR Poets at the Kent Canterbury Faire reading series, now in its 15th year. She was a Willard R. Espy Literary Foundation resident in 2000, and an Adam Family Foundation White Bridge Traveling Fellowship recipient in 2001. Marjorie's poetry, short fiction and literary nonfiction have appeared in Vagabond, Arnazella's Reading List, A Blackberry Sun, Spring Rain, The Clearing, The Duckabush Journal, Signal International, Mr. Cogito, Stone Drum, Images, The Written Arts, Pacific, The Padilla Bay Poetry Anthology (Washington State Department of Ecology, 1994), Dark Orchid, (Inkpot Press1993) Writer's Northwest Handbook (Media Weavers 1991), Voices in the Trees (Evergreen Press 1989), Ghost in the Garden (book & audio tape with original music, produced by GodZillah Gospel Press 1995), A Loving Voice Vol. 2 (The Charles Press, 1995), & others. |
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