Anne Agnes Colwell's work has appeared in Midwest Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review, Dominion Review, The Atlanta Review, California Quarterly and Eclectic Literary Forum and Eve Shelnutt's anthology.
The Writer's Room, includes a chapter on her poems entitled "Discovering the Voices of Biblical Women." Her first book, Believing Their Shadows, was a finalist for the Brittingham Prize at the University of Wisconsin, the Anhinga Prize, New Issues Poetry Prize, and The Quarterly Review of Literature.
When I lose you,
to reeds
To anyone who
I will hide it
I will fill the world
Until whatever moves
I will make the world
and I will,
in some moment
bare as cinder block
and cold,
I will lose this longing too.
I will give it away
that lean toward the bay,
to August corn
aching upward into
skies that arc away.
puts out a hand.
in the nests of
screech owls
and starlings.
with yearning.
moves through loss with me.
lonely.
Some voice inside him said
Then he noticed the way
In the shallows, children gathered,
The fisherman took out pliers
"Turn and look" and there was the fin.
He held the net still,
felt his feet in his boots,
felt the bay crawl around him.
the blue triangle swayed
in the swells, rocking
without volition,
and he tugged
the curious stillness in.
buzzing to see,
touching the body with sticks.
Schools of tiny black fish
spilled over the white tongue
shining like starlings or summer flies.
But what amazed most
were the eyes, each eye
terribly alone on either side
of the bone buttress.
and pulled at its teeth.
I wanted one for luck.
But each broke off, delicate
white shards in his hand.
He threw the body
back on the sand and waded
out again with his net.
Even the children tired of looking
finally. But for hours,
as word passed, casual couples,
walkers, sifted down the beach
for one last look
from each cold eye.
Here's the thing. For two days now
of future loss, taken little tastes
like icing from the birthday cakes
Thick white circles with pink roses
fancy lettering. I couldn't resist.
over the hard iced ridges,
barely enough to taste, enough
After dinner, after lighting little candles
But found (I'm sure you guessed)
lightly touching
whole
almost like no day at all
my mind has nibbled at the sweet edge
of a sadness
my mother bought at Alleva's Bakery.
and piping -- Happy Birthday in yellow
I'd run my finger so lightly
only at the bottom, on the back,
almost to hide.
and singing, I'd get a whole piece.
the stolen delicacy is always more sweet,
leaving the thing so nearly
had passed.
We poked butterknives under the wainscotting,
So we ran, bent low
coaxing crickets into the air,
caught them under cups.
Because someone told me killing them
was bad luck, we planned
to catch them all
and let them go.
and laughing as they arched
beautifully away. Eight of us,
scattered now, lived
together in that summer house
where white cups sprouted
like mushrooms
and each cup housed a bright voice.
The river rides under the traffic bridges,
under the derricks and the telephone wires.
The river turns below Martin Luther King Boulevard,
below the boarded windows of Berger Brothers
Office Furniture. The river gives back the colors
of scrub pine, tarred pile-ons, and early summer maple,
gives back the impasto sky.
Beside the river, from this four-story height,
the headlights coming North on I-95 pay themselves out
like a rope of shining water from a pump,
not ponderous as the river, but quick,
like cold water pouring into the June dusk of Wilmington.
The river is rising in the name of the tides,
and the moon, and the rainy weekend.
No point in its eternity can happen again, as Heraclites
said, speaking of his own veins growing old,
his own light, paying itself out like a rope of bright water.
All text and images in The Central California Poetry Journal are copyrighted. Copyright by © by Scott Galloway2002. All rights are reserved. See main Journal page for copyright information.
Authors and poets submitting original materials to this journal retain all rights to their original work, except those rights specifically assigned in writing to Solo Publications including the right to publish the submitted work in The Central California Poetry Journal. The poems on this page are copyrighted by the author. Copyright © Anne Agnes Colwell
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