A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a poetry collection published in 2011 in the UK, 'TANGENTS', her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a good two dozen US poetry reviews as well as some print anthologies, and Diane Lockward's The Crafty Poet. She won third price in in the 2009 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse (US), was semi-finalist in the Naugatuck poetry contest 2012/13 and has been a finalist in several GR contests, winning it in October 2014.

Rose Mary Boehm

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The Soothsayer

'Sooth', a word conjuring up
my mother's breath and the smell
of milk and that soft-hard warmth
under my hands.

The woman said I had been a man
in my previous lives. Said this time
around I was practicing to be a woman.
Said she saw a sword at my left hip.
(My left leg is stronger than the right
and shorter, and my sword arm
had an easy time holding my babies.)

And you, my lover, so unsure of where
your life lies, were inflamed by the thought
of the woman who would have been a man.