Central California Poetry Journal

Volume 2002 Number 1

The Poetry of Central California Page 0205

The Poetry of Anne Agness Colwell


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.


Losing You

When I lose you,
and I will,
in some moment
bare as cinder block
and cold,
I will lose this longing too.
I will give it away

to reeds
that lean toward the bay,
to August corn
aching upward into
skies that arc away.

To anyone who
puts out a hand.

I will hide it
in the nests of
screech owls
and starlings.

I will fill the world
with yearning.

Until whatever moves
moves through loss with me.

I will make the world
lonely.


Hammerhead

Some voice inside him said
"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.

Then he noticed the way
the blue triangle swayed
in the swells, rocking
without volition,
and he tugged
the curious stillness in.

In the shallows, children gathered,
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.

The fisherman took out pliers
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.


Cake

Here's the thing. For two days now
my mind has nibbled at the sweet edge

of future loss, taken little tastes
of a sadness

like icing from the birthday cakes
my mother bought at Alleva's Bakery.

Thick white circles with pink roses
and piping -- Happy Birthday in yellow

fancy lettering. I couldn't resist.
I'd run my finger so lightly

over the hard iced ridges,
only at the bottom, on the back,

barely enough to taste, enough
almost to hide.

After dinner, after lighting little candles
and singing, I'd get a whole piece.

But found (I'm sure you guessed)
the stolen delicacy is always more sweet,

lightly touching
leaving the thing so nearly

whole

almost like no day at all
had passed.


Crickets

We poked butterknives under the wainscotting,
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.

So we ran, bent low
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.

Processional

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.


The background on this page is made from a photograph of a meadow filled with wildflowers

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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2-07-02