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Anne Cecelia Holmes

I know the precise / course of action is to make / myself vacant, orbit just out / of reach, hold my head together / with mostly alien thoughts.


Hiding in the Overglow

If I hesitate it's because I'm
teaching you where to pause.
In a minute I will demonstrate
the exact movement clouds
make when serious things
happen below. How I know
someone is eating my garden
but still I need an artifact
to hold. I could try to
approximate where I stand
in position to natural law
but instead I am building
a memory box and filling it
with forgotten food from
the fridge. There are ways
to know what can't be said.
What makes a tornado stop
and why I keep touching
my face to remember who
I'm supposed to imitate.
If I understood a meteor's
selfish trajectory I might feel
okay about abandonment.
Justice will either favor me
or it won't. I yell so what
into a forest and get strangled
by it on the way home.

Here is a Trick

Even though I never once asked
for a favor. Even though I let
bravery get tongue-tied every
time. I'm told there are barely
shadows anymore and I get scared
thinking I could be spared
absolutely nothing. If tonight
there is an emergency please
count me out. Before I learn
that the world is full I need
to reconfigure. I know the precise
course of action is to make
myself vacant, orbit just out
of reach, hold my head together
with mostly alien thoughts.
The truth is I'd rather
trust in ritual than hope for
the future. Look at me when I
say that everything is steeped
in something. Everything
is steeped in something.


Anne Cecelia Holmes is the author of a chapbook, Junk Parade (dancing girl press 2012), and co-author with Lily Ladewig of the e-chapbook I Am A Natural Wonder (Blue Hour Press 2011). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in jubilat, Conduit, Denver Quarterly, InDigest, Phoebe, H_NGM_N, and others. She lives in Northampton, MA.