Anne-Adele Wightfour poems
Unsettled Score
Vapor fills the doorway
porous, marine sponge
breathing salt.
Uncalled
migrated out of season
cuttlebone swims in milk
dogfish ride the subway.
Uninvited
party crasher, flotsam
solid haunt
man riding a dried seahorse.
Imprudent
Imprudent
you go about like a tiger
not knowing you stir the real beast.
You associate bears with comfort food––
yours or theirs?
Are you sure of your wooded entry?
Ground squirrel speaks bursts of static
fluent in the language
you know you forgot your password, so
learn some basic phrases for safe conduct.
To provoke the forest is to call for trouble
in the legendary glade where wolf waits
asking, like the Sphinx, "Are you real?"
Destructive Agent
She kills ducks with a cleaver
between pots of impatiens
on her back patio.
Suburban moon
turns away in discomfort.
She prays every morning
to spirits of drought and insecticide.
She eats as much as she can and wears red
so everyone will see her,
even the suburban moon,
and go on seeing her when she's not there:
Stain in your eye
knife in your back
blood on your terrace
hole in your heart.
Birthday Coming
Decisions wise and foolish
made over chili peppers
blaze my trail through decades.
Time bristles behind me, comet's tail,
spined fruit piles high in a crater.
I'm younger than rabbit ears
older than space channels.
Birthday rolls in garish
winking mint in tinfoil––
do I carry the wisdom of ages?
I want to sit on a cake
in jeans I've worn only twice
before candles rocket from their box
croaking like pastel ravens.
--------
Anne-Adele Wight is active on the Philadelphia poetry scene. She has written two chapbooks and her work has appeared in American Writing, Philadelphia Poets, Mad Poets Review, and other publications. A self-employed editor, she loves other people's poetry, hiking, and music of all kinds. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and two cats, as well as a multitude of talking houseplants.
