By J.C. Talamantez
Featured art: maternal memories, 2019 by Emma Stefanoff
When you were a girl, you thought about
what kind of woman you would be
how you would differ
from her / her life in hardening hands
the work, an early marriage
then the angry one
her suspect taste in men
that she hung on when there was nothing
left to hang
kept laboring the labor
the men wouldn’t do
It was a long time to undo / the belief
that to be a woman is partial
a life of shadows joining
and sometimes i still feel
like a dog always checking
its masters eyes
You wanted / to be a woman
this is what it is sometimes
J.C. Talamantez is a Mexican-American poet who received her MFA from Texas State University. Her work has appeared in Salamander, in Smartish Pace as a finalist for the Beullah Rose Prize, and others.
New Ohio Review 
Thank you, J.C. Talamantez, for your poem “Essential Worker.” Besides the careful crafting, a feature of the poem that delights, I thank you because I had to read the poems several times. That sort of thing doesn’t happen for me very often. I had to read it several times because I felt an affection for the words, the lines, and the song. Your meaning is so clear, but also so beautifully expressed. You write with confidence and authority. Thank you for this gem.
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