Exhibition of Thirty-Seven Seer Bonnets Representing Brigham Young’s Thirty-Seven Wives, by Morgan Ray

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Exhibition of Thirty-Seven Seer Bonnets Representing
Brigham Young’s Thirty-Seven Wives

Sisters, we’ve tied these strings under our chins, 
knotted them at the throat, needles pressed
against our skin until we’re pricked with blood run red.
But, we pulled ourselves up by the straps and salvaged
a modicum of happiness amongst the mess.
Imagine a day when someone looks at this artist’s
rendition of our bonnets encased in glass—pretty
from a distance—silver and covered with pins; thousands
of pearly heads with straight spiny ends
that pierce the fabric and point to everything 
we’ve stuffed under our hats—visions 
that we’d rather forget—tears and sweat, Brigham’s
 “X” chalked on the chosen bedroom door at night, 
fever and starvation, too many children dead.

Yet, we all donned a bonnet and shaded our eyes, 
grabbed a hoe and waged a war against 
blistering sun and bitter soil. What if 
we’d untied the straps, picked apart the seams,
loosened our tongues instead?

Morgan Ray

View the Seer Bonnets, by Angela Ellsworth, at 1.10 in the video above, or at the artist site, here:
http://www.aellsworth.com/seer-bonnets

Morgan Ray resides in Salt Lake City, Utah, sandwiched between a dying saline lake and the Wasatch mountains. She has written two books of poetry, the most recent, a book of postcard poems. Her poetry has been published in The Ekphrastic Review, Autumn Sky Poetry, Unbroken Journal and Gigantic Sequins where her work was chosen as the winner of their 12th annual flash fiction contest.