Writings

Requiem to a Marriage has been published in Literary Review of Canada and can be read on their website.

Here are three pieces from Myna's new book.

THE SELF-IMPROVEMENT REVOLUTION

I'm learning to lucid dream,
be powerful in and out of my conscious awareness,
in and out of my boa-feathered baby dolls.

There are more ways to improve
than I can count carbs or free weight reps:
learn Pilates, French, arrange flowers, meditate.
Find my Chi. My G-spot. Take Kabbalah classes.

I used to see psychics,
tried rolfing and sensory deprivation tanks in the 80s.
No more past-life regression for me,
nothing that digs so deep.

It's all about the self-empowerment, baby,
and he'll never know what hit him.
I'm so centered I can walk in my Jimmy Choos
and snort a little coke at parties like Kate Moss,
while repeating daily
"I am perfect, whole and beautiful."

Women, if they stay single long enough,
become bounty hunters—
they'll stake you out, take you home, tie you up-
long before any dinner conversation.

Self-improvement as salvation
is the modern woman's revolution.
It has its myths, like any other,
such as strength and self-sufficiency. Also
"the more you evolve, the more you'll be loved."

TAKE ME

He reaches out big, workman hands
lone-wolf arms tense & needy-
take me, he implores,
with my baggage,
insecurities, carpel tunnel syndrome.

Work your woman, earth mother, Goddess-
power magic, and make me whole.

Take my full head of tall dark-
to the cleft in a jaw that could cut cheese.

Mend my insides.
I'll give you what I withheld
all these years-
please, anoint me with your post-graduate
approval, and petite, sensuous mouth.

I reach out manicured hands:
take me, with all my
unmet expectations, overblown desires,
& make me scream. Overwhelm my
intellectualized craving to be loved.

Obliterate all these years of therapy:
drag me
by my hair & pull me into the cave.

THE ANGEL EFFECT

Aren't you dead? I ask. No, honey. Your dad and I divorced. Didn't want you to know that, to lose your faith in love. So I went to live in Florida. But it's later that you pick it apart. Sooner or later one parent or the other will be cruel, stupid or maddening, just as you remember. You want to shake them, pull your hair. He was probably buying 5 cases of sardines on special to save a dollar, or rolling his eyes and saying of course I love you—don't be so dramatic to my ten-year-old self. They leave you and you become an adult, individuated, who doesn't seem to need parental love. You grieve in your sleep and don't even remember your dreams. I scrawl ‘dreamed about dad, again,' and figured I'd remember the rest.