Listening To The Snow Go to sleep, go to sleep. Let us cover up all the harsh edges of the world. Let us settle over the dead and unburied, Let our deep drifts pile against your gravestones and erase the dates, and then the names. When you think of one, you think of all the dead - They are no more separate than we are. Listen to what we show you: this white silence. Go to sleep, go to sleep.
Author: Anneliese
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Listening To The Snow
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The Fool
The Fool If I could paint, this is what I would paint tonight: A great black dog leaping across the sky, body stretched the way a dog’s body stretches in the moment during running when all its paws have left the ground, the moment when it decides against gravity, but instead to reach for the full moon, take it in its jaws and hold on tight while the stars stream off its fur like water. Now I see there is a person, too, standing on its back like a circus performer, arms outstretched for balance, a wild grin on their face. I am not the performer, not the dog, the moon, or even the painter. Yet here I am, standing in the moonlight, grinning like a fool.
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Sheboygan
Sheboygan We made a spot in the center of the city: here, it will be green. We trained our flowers to grow up trellises, to mark out our paths. Behind us, Lake Michigan creeps closer and closer. Don’t turn around, don’t look. You know what happens in the stories to the child who leaves the path. You’ve seen them at night, in your dreams, dancing wide-eyed at the bottom of the lake.
My notes: I love the Great Lakes immensely. Maybe this is partially from growing up in the middle of nowhere in Northern Michigan, but nature always has both sides to me – it’s awe-inspiring, which means it’s awesome and awful. But I think the key to how I see it is that these aren’t “two sides to the same coin” or something like that – that’s too separate. The danger of it is part of what makes it beautiful. The fact that it’s beautiful is part of what makes it dangerous. But you know, at this point I’m just rambling philosophically about things I’d rather try to express in poetry.
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you left it too late again
like a glass of water with a film of dust like a jug of milk with a rancid smell like a soft potato spotted with mold like a flower that’s lost its crown an empty closet a suitcase gone an unread letter on a petal-strewn table
I don’t write that much poetry that’s completely without punctuation or capitalization, but it felt right for this one, where… I suppose I would say that the speaker doesn’t even have the energy for either of those things.
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Wherever You Are, Look
Wherever You Are, Look Wherever you are, look out the window (please let there be a window)— at the sky, at something green if you can find it; This world can't exist just to grind us down, I refuse to believe it. And if I'm wrong, at least let me be ground down not by concrete and rulers— Let me be crushed under the weight of a mountain, the sight of a storm and the towering, lightning-cracked redwood.
The view out my window right now is… uninspiring, to say the least. I can see a single tree off in the distance; the rest is all concrete. There are a lot of advantages to living downtown, but I am still a backwoods person when it comes down to it, I suppose!
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Passport for the Dead (Crossing the Lethe)
Passport for the Dead (Crossing the Lethe) to be tucked into a pocket before burial Take all that is good with you: Bright, clear sunshine, The snap of fresh green peas, Watermelon in summer, Thick stew in winter, And running dogs, tongues hanging out – Fires in cold weather – Sitting thigh-to-thigh – Warm rain like tears – And a flask of our river water Drink only from this – Refuse all other waters! Please don’t forget Please remember I will be with you soon
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A Love Poem
A Love Poem You tell me only a fool loves the desert. If I ride in there, that’s it– there’s no coming back. Maybe I’d rather leave my bleached bones to be scoured clean by sand Than have them rest in the cool, dark earth next to you
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Leaving
Leaving Every day now, she stares a little bit past him, Focusing her eyes on a calendar behind his head Or, just over his right ear, the street out the window. Some evenings, after work, she stays on the bus, Her stop passing by outside the window, Heading out and then walking back in the twilight. She is practicing walking past her life— Up the street, around the block— For the day she doesn’t turn back.
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Walking In the Separate Dark
Walking In the Separate Dark Blue second-story lights Of waking dreamers and insomniacs Factory shift-workers Unemployed night-owls People lying in beds Who can’t go on People sitting in chairs Who can’t not go on Although they have nothing else Each light Is as far apart As a star Somewhere, a baby is crying A tired woman picks it up And holds it to her breast
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Older Publications
Here, I’m gathering together my older publications in one spot:
My poem “Metaphors” was published in Issue 31, Spring 2014, of Ruminate, a beautiful literary magazine dedicated to “slowing down and paying attention.” Sadly, after 16 years, Ruminate shut down in 2022. However, they have made every issue available, for free, online, in full print layout/format, which is amazing. The issues can be found here.
“Metaphors” was also republished on Little Eagle’s RE/VERSE, a blog dedicated to republishing published poems that are “well worth another look.” It was published there on September 16, 2015.
In Volume 10, Issue 1 (Spring 2009) of Georgetown Review, my poem “To Hal Struthee” was published. This journal was founded in 1993, and unfortunately published its last issue in 2015.
This is also the first, and only, poem that I have had reviewed (well, the whole issue was reviewed)! The Review Review called it “a powerful meditation on the effect our lives leave on the world.” While The Review Review is no longer available online, it can be viewed thanks to the Internet Archive right here.
Two poems, “Photographs” and “I Never Knew Jesus Smelled So Good,” appeared in Hurricane Review, Volume 1 Issue 6, 2008.
Eclectic Muse, a journal that was dedicated to more formal poetry, published “The Magical Journal of C. Eustatius” and “Jumprope Song” in Volume 13, Christmas 2007.
And my earliest publication was in the still-going-strong Dunes Review – in volume 12, Issue 2 (Winter 2007-2008), two of my poems appeared: “December Photograph” and “Mrs. Ellis’ Twelve Months Without Rain” (if you click the link above, you’ll see the title has been revised to “Twelve Months Without Rain).
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When I’m Gone
When I’m Gone Bury my bones by the corner of your house At night, when you’re asleep I will dance my skeleton dance What nightmare will dare come near you Past the music of my bones?
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The Man Who Nearly Drowned
The Man Who Nearly Drowned From that time on, his stories grew stranger Of the time he met the talking crow And the pine tree full of dancing girls And the green city that lay in the lake Which could only be reached by holding your breath And believing, which nobody did but him And then he could no longer go out alone To stand on the shore and stare at the lake It’s one thing to talk to the talking crow And another to walk out and sink like a stone While the bubbles behind you rise towards the light And to pick out a hint of green in the dark They’re moving him now to a different state Where the ocean’s green grass and the city’s bright steel And the girls all dance on a certain street And the light in his eyes is a stranger’s pen As he sits very still and hears in his head The familiar sound of his rushing blood And he thinks of the folly of trusting a crow And believing a thing that won’t stay on the ground As the wind brings no smell of the sea
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Authority
Authority is a nineteen-year-old boy with short-cropped hair and stubby fingers and a uniform and a gun he is watching a woman his eyes wide she is younger than she looks squatting by the metal fence what is the worst that can happen if he ignores her what is the worst that can happen if he acts he shifts his weight like a nervous student one with an important test the teacher forgot to attend and what is she doing neither laughing nor crying her whispering is too soft to be called singing
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After Blake
After Blake I wanted to see his tree full of angels, To follow him outside, To find the edge of the curtain, To pull it back and watch the dancers Rehearsing – faces filled with Beautiful concentration – On the joining of bones, on the smooth Perfect fit in the socket, The miracle of the hip, the ankle, The delicate swiveling wrist – No, I am the only one Thinking of bones! Behind their closed eyes Is only music –
This poem now also available to watch right here, and a visual version of the text here.
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The Empty Palace
The cow, the hot sun,
the statue of the man
who died in a duel,
the things I'm not allowed
to say, the dusty bench,
the fountain, the park
empty, the hospital empty
gleaming marble and gold,
the people allowed to cry
on TV and the people
not allowed to cry,
the grand steps, the arch
of heavy stone, the rooms
filled with slanting sunlight,
not a soul in sight.Another quite old one to share!
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Like Vines
Like Vines We climbed out the windows to reach the sun, Pushed our fingers Into mortar, dug down and found No substance there. We wriggled our toes between bricks And they crumbled, Dust on the heads of the people passing Far below. We stretched ourselves towards that heat And burning light Until the world flared white before Our eyes, And something wet began to flow Across our skin, And from our blisters, something new Began to sprout
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The Basket Woman
The Basket Woman She wanders slowly along the streets In a blue flowered housedress. At every Mass and funeral, she appears, Her mouth moving soundlessly as a ghost. She presses a picnic basket to her side, Large and plain and secret, but we know. The basket is for babies and for children. Who has disappeared? Who has “moved away?” We peer out from behind fences, Afraid to catch a glimpse of her. In church, we whisper, trying so hard Not to turn around. If she sees… So we go on playing four square and jumprope, Hoping she’ll take Charlie, who called us fat, And she stands on the corner, clutching her basket, Whispering to it too softly for us to hear.
