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Poetry

Poetry Issue #38

Drape the Mirrors.

By E. Kristin Anderson
 
 

Two months had passed –  

the bed was all made; 

the doctor on the phone 

made an art of simple speech. 

Back from the dead 

a tiny voice reached… 
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Petroglyphs Blood Moon
Image: “Petroglyphs Blood Moon” by Susan Solomon, gouache, 8×8 in.

E. Kristin Anderson

Featured Poet

 

 

 

Drape the Mirrors.

Two months had passed—
the bed was all made;
the doctor on the phone
made an art of simple speech.
Back from the dead,
a tiny voice reached
and turned the lock—
lips too red
and packed with flowers.
Madness, perhaps, to think
the sickness was over,
interrupted with a little gesture
of flesh and blood.
Selfish little heart:
alone back there with the radio playing,
home from the hospital
still and in the dark.

This is a cento. Source Material: Rice, Anne. “Chapter 9.” Lasher, Mass Market ed.,
Ballantine, 1995, pp. 175–207.

 

 

Chill

Night came on, peaceful;
I lay quiet on a heap of pillows
like a doll of myself

                          I wanted to go back
a song that seemed utterly oblivious to
            a little truth
            wandering from dance.

I held tight to
                        feverish images,
            lay awake,
blundered about the room.

The dark made noises back to me
and the doctor came
and I was living still.

This is a cento. Source Material: Rice, Anne. “Chapter 23.” Lasher, Mass Market ed., Ballantine, 1995, pp. 417-428.

 

 

Lullaby Time

The cool of the summer mornings      can’t go on—
everybody’s waiting;       I am the one in control of things.
Maybe it’s something to worry about.    We all know
I’ve never lived                 and it’s beautiful.


You’re the one who was         dancing. Part of the package:
an uncanny sense of time     to take you girls there
every night after dinner,           not holding on to anything.


I was young. I was furious,     hung up on the middle of the day,
less than a crisis.     How those romances take advantage of
        a little accident:     anything we can give  to calm.


Baby, try.      Join me. Make that a lifetime.     Change in the fall.
Can you suggest     a witch girl? Her medicine cabinet?    That final time,
head against a tree,    needing some nourishment,       I don’t want to hear.

This is a found poem using speech and quotations from the following source:
Duncan, Lois. Locked in Time. Revised Paperback ed. New York: Little, Brown, 2011. 62-66, 69-71, 137-138, 142-145. Print.

 

 

Once in a while at lovely places

My dear, you do not need     to look into
so many adventures     sitting here on the same porch.
It seems strange     in the morning light
glad to have a place to come to      I’m afraid
to stay,       to drive  to sleep. Strong currents
settle places     a chance for years    to go places
too dangerous for    the happiness and the love and the peace.
The tides are like     an unusual sort of man   dressed
to dance with    a piano. And it’s supposed to be   real,
swimming,     a chance to unpack     this morning—
looking out over the same sea,     I remember it as
all the reasons for      the gift of time.

This is a found poem using speech and quotations from the following source:
Duncan, Lois. A Gift of Magic. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Bantam Doubleday Dell for Young Readers, 1999. 1, 3-14. Print.

 

 

By E. Kristin Anderson

E. Kristin Anderson is a poet, Starbucks connoisseur, and glitter enthusiast living in Austin, Texas. A Connecticut College graduate with a B.A. in classics, Kristin has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She is the editor of Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture (Anomalous Press), and Hysteria: Writing the female body (Sable Books, forthcoming). Her writing has been published worldwide in magazines and anthologies and she is the author of eight chapbooks of poetry including A Guide for the Practical Abductee (Red Bird Chapbooks), Pray Pray Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press), Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press), We’re Doing Witchcraft (Hermeneutic Chaos Press), and 17 seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press). Kristin is an editor at Red Paint Hill and was formerly a poetry editor at Found Poetry Review. Once upon a time she worked the night shift at The New Yorker. She now works during daylight as a freelance editor and writing coach. She blogs at EKristinAnderson.com and tweets at @ek_anderson.