Crossing Guard

photo: ralph murre

Crossing Guard

by Marilyn Annucci

I drive toward her—

crossing guard who scowls into traffic.

So butch she might have been

an inventor of steam shovels.

Stop me! I pray. She steps out

Stronger than Steel.

Kids in knit hats,

nylon jackets, straggle before my car.

I want to rev my engine.

Guardian.

I want to stall out.

She eyes me, turns away.  Oh

to be crossed! She lowers

the brim of her cap, waves us on—

us, not just me.  You’re no one

special, her strut says

Heartbreaker.

                       ~ previously published in Love & Lust: An Anthology
                          (Parallel Press)

The Arrows That Choose Us

photo: ralph murre, glass artist: unknown

The Arrows That Choose Us

by Marilyn Annucci

the ones who hover above us, pressing us

to live or love or be eaten by death

are smaller than ferns, taller than goats,

redder than blood, cold as snow inside snow

inside caves of rock or shadows or

a garden’s hell. They exist in mud, in a sky

beyond sky, in a mind that won’t stop,

in the white light of another realm where

duty calls, where tunnels are wrought,

where strange creatures move forward

bearing black bones, talons, words, the prick

of desire, whatever is needed to tear us awake

~ previously published in Waiting Room (Hill-Stead)

About Suffering

photo: ralph murre

About Suffering

by Marilyn Annucci

  

Though you sang to me

while I stood at the stove,

and spoke of cures,

even your optimism in those days

made me a little sad.

The only life I’ve ever wholly believed in

has been the body half-broken, 

or leaving. Even when we find the ones

who make us laugh, whispering

silliness into one another’s necks.

Your pile of pills each morning

has grown, the proteins trying

to  transmit signals to the brain’s front doors

with instructions: Lift hand. 

Regulate temperature. Speak.

Speak to me, dear one,

tell me again, though you scramble a word,

lose a thought, need another nap.

It takes more than a leap of neurons 

to love like this.

~ previously published in Waiting Room

Cassowary

Cassowary
. . . Daintree National Park, North Queensland, Australia

. . . by Marilyn Annucci

The feathery staffs of the sugar cane appear
like ladies in light lingerie. I have no
charms myself. In the forest of rain and
green umbrellas, I try my powers: cassowary,
cassowary, cassowary. I think the word

hard, but the black-skirted bird never
comes. Its prehistoric feet stop somewhere
beyond the strangling figs and bumpy
satin ash with their enormous honey flowers.
I imagine the female, which grows to six

feet and can disembowel me with one swipe
of her claw—but only if threatened. I pray
for the miracle of such a creature, but my fear
holds her back, like an amulet I wear past
the ferns and eucalyptus. I imagine spiders

as big as my boot, listen for snakes that
could bracelet my ankles. I am hardly St. Francis,
more the laughingstock of forest fauna. Not
unlike the mimosa, or cringing plant, the plant
of shame, whose leaves close at anyone’s touch.

~ first published in Southern Poetry Review