Guyasdom's D'Sonoqua by Emily Carr, 1930, by Karen George

Guyasdom's D'Sonoqua, by Emily Carr (Canada) 1930

Guyasdom's D'Sonoqua by Emily Carr, 1930        
 
“She seemed to be part of the tree itself, as if she had grown there at its heart, and the carver had only chipped away the outer wood. So you could see her.”  
Emily Carr, Klee Wyck
 
Red cedar totem. Dangling breasts, carved as eagle heads. Dark hair matted to her scalp. Face a seizure of circles. Thick, wide brows arch high over sunken eyes, pupils white ringed in black like bullseyes. Cheeks concave discs.
 
Twisted greenery covers a third of her. A toothy alligator suns on a roof, bellows in her left ear.
 
Is she the nourisher, Earth Mother, or the fabled hag who steals children in the forest? I say both—unhinged with grief from how we maul our home.
 
Her arms grasp for us. Lips strain in a perpetually-open O, mouth a grim abyss.

Karen George
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Karen George is author of three poetry collections from Dos Madres Press: Swim Your Way Back (2014), A Map and One Year (2018), and Where Wind Tastes Like Pears (2021). She won Slippery Elm’s 2022 Poetry Contest, and her short story collection, How We Fracture, which won the Rosemary Daniell Fiction Prize, is forthcoming from Minerva Rising Press in Spring 2023. After 25 years as a computer programmer/analyst, she retired to write full-time. She enjoys photography and visiting museums, cemeteries, historic towns, gardens, and bodies of water.  Her website is: https://karenlgeorge.blogspot.com/.