Tag: Ann E. Wallace

Bending Toward Hope by Ann E. Wallace

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Bending Toward Hope

A woman I’ve never met before—
a stranger, but also, soon,

a confidante—starts by telling
me she has good luck.

Before sharing her story, of cancer
and its recurrence, she needs

to establish this baseline truth
to remind herself,

and so I know to listen
with an ear bent toward hope.

*

Ann E. Wallace is Poet Laureate Emeritus of Jersey City, New Jersey and host of The WildStory: A Podcast of Poetry and Plants. She is the author of Keeping Room (forthcoming from Nixes Mate), Days of Grace and Silence: A Chronicle of COVID’s Long Haul (Kelsay Books) and Counting by Sevens (Main Street Rag). She is online at AnnWallacePhD.com and on Instagram @annwallace409.

Three Poems by Ann E. Wallace

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The Funeral Director, Spring 2020

He bites his lower lip, clasps
his hands behind his back, and steels
his legs into a wide stance, knowing

one brimming tear holds power to unleash
the others welled up and waiting.
It used to be the unexpected

that disrupted his balance—the new suit
purchased two sizes too small
for a teen struck down in the road,

the calm words of a mother
to her grown child laid out before her, speaking
of tomorrow as if nothing had changed,

or the collapse and despair of another
who knew everything had.
But in these endless days

of horror when illness envelops
and makes a home in our city—
when the morgues are overflowing,

and the bodies are stacked and held
three weeks for burial, when the caskets
are closed and families could not kiss

or send off their dear beloved—he works
in solitude, carrying the grief of legions.
He removes the tubes and bathes

the bodies of the deceased, dresses
each one in clothing brought
by loved ones, set their hands

and combs their hair, placing them
in caskets their families would never open,
and the mounting waves of sorrow

swell high and higher, until they crest
and the rushing waters wash,
and wash, and wash over him.

*

Emergency Room Visits in March 2020

When they turned the pediatric emergency room
into a COVID triage area in the early days,

decals of monkeys with curling tails,
loping elephants, spotted giraffes grazed

the walls. The doctor who took my vitals
was tired, hadn’t seen his kids in two weeks.

The hospital prepared to admit me, then sent
me home after two rounds of bloodwork and testing.

They needed the bed. Three days later, I returned
on my 50th birthday, barely conscious,

bypassed the children’s unit, and was wheeled inside
where the serious cases were handled.

The aide hesitated to help me onto the bed,
offered a gloved hand only after I pleaded,

and my new doctor would not step inside
my curtain. He poked his masked face

through the gap in the fabric to ask
my cell number. He wrote it on a Post-it

and backed away like I was a caged tiger.
I never received his call.

*

Cleared to Leave

My face is pale and splotchy when my ex-
husband picks me up at home, like death
blooms within me. The weather, April

dreary. Jason drives me to the emergency room—
my third hospital this spring. I wear a pink
woolen cap, loop my oxygen line around my ears,

tuck it behind my glasses, hook the cannula
under my nose. I lug the tank inside
and sit in a folding chair in the makeshift

waiting room—the department had been under
renovation when the virus hit. The work
on the building has stopped. The work of saving

lives has not. My doctor called ahead
for a lung scan. The ER doctor takes my blood
and vitals but never orders the scan.

I rest in my thin, faded hospital gown,
in the overwhelmed ER, so much like the others,
each one unique in its chaos. Cleared to leave,

I dress slowly, layer by layer—shirt and pants,
sweater, jacket, hat. Untethered from the hospital
oxygen, reconnected to my emergency supply

from home, I hoist the tank. Alone, undirected,
I stumble through the halls, carry my heavy load,
search for the unmarked exit. Outside in the cold,

I realize I left my glasses on my hospital bed.
They are gone. Per pandemic policy, thrown
into the trash with all other personal effects.

*

Ann E. Wallace is Poet Laureate Emeritus of Jersey City, New Jersey and host of The WildStory: A Podcast of Poetry and Plants. Her second poetry collection, Days of Grace and Silence: A Chronicle of COVID’s Long Haul, was published by Kelsay Books in 2024. She has previously published work in ONE ART, Thimble, Halfway Down the Stairs, Gyroscope Review, Wordgathering, and other journals. You can follow her online at AnnWallacePhD.com and on Instagram @annwallace409.

Assisted Breathing by Ann E. Wallace

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Assisted Breathing

Put on your own oxygen mask
first.

For years, I dispensed this snappy
wisdom to myself and to friends lost

in the sleepless nights, the conflicted
allegiances of parenting.

This was before people spoke of self-care.
Back then, we were in survival mode.

Back then, we needed to remind ourselves
to breathe. But it wasn’t literal.

Nobody actually had an oxygen mask.
Life has grown more fragile.

When the air became thin,
my mask went on first.

The message—stay alive so you can help
your children—still holds true.

It’s no longer a metaphor.
And I did        and I am.

*

Ann E. Wallace is Poet Laureate Emeritus of Jersey City, New Jersey and host of The WildStory: A Podcast of Poetry and Plants. Her second poetry collection, Days of Grace and Silence: A Chronicle of COVID’s Long Haul, was published by Kelsay Books in 2024. She has previously published work in ONE ART, Thimble, Halfway Down the Stairs, Gyroscope Review, Wordgathering, and other journals. You can follow her online at AnnWallacePhD.com and on Instagram @annwallace409.

Five Poems by Ann E. Wallace

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The Empty Casing

Imagine this: if you have planters
of parsley or dill growing outside
in a sunny spot, odds are good
that you have tossed butterfly eggs
onto your pasta with the garnish
or mixed them into your salad.

Just imagine.

Have you ever seen the egg
of a butterfly? Before caterpillar,
before chrysalis. The miniscule sphere,
a perfect glassy orb deposited
by swallowtail or monarch or fritillary,
and perched so delicately on a leaf
or the whisper-thin stem
of your garden herbs.

I saw my first last summer.
I watched as the brilliant swallowtail—
she visited daily for a spell—found
my bed of parsley. I searched
for a week, leaf by leaf until
I spotted it: one perfect egg.

How small, how fragile.
How large my hands,
my garden shears—the egg stood
such small chance against a quick
snip at mealtime. Small chance
against hot sun that can wither
a wispy herb into the parched earth
over a few dry days of drought.

It is truly a wonder
we have any butterflies at all.
But my patio egg, it defied the odds—
it hatched under my protective gaze,
grew fat off the parsley I did not eat,
spun a home around itself.

I watched and waited as it grew strong
Then one morning I found
the empty dry casing still stuck
to the side of my clay planter.
The butterfly—it was gone, flown
away into its new life.

*

Note to Self: Two Kindnesses, or One

Do you get as frustrated as I
that some lessons do not come easy
or fast, that there are things we know
deep in our bodies, that we have learned
through trial and error and error
and error, and yet
we must learn them again?

I think you know,
this feeling of carving
out space, of creating
sanctuary within your home,
your body, of finding
the necessary beauty of silence,
but then inviting the noise to rush in
when a friend calls for help.

I struggle here, to find
the line between kindnesses—
between being a good human
and being good to myself. And truly,
why do those things feel at odds,
and how might I lift my eyes
upon myself if I held a line
here, between you and me?

But what I really want to say
is that I think our needs
are mutual and that maybe
this note to self is a reminder
to ask for help in claiming
silence.

*

Practice

I think I had the whole thing
wrong.

Again, again, again.
I thought it was about me,

that I was the end point
of these battles

through chemo and vertigo,
that three decades of knowledge

were meant to save
me.

Turns out, my dry run
held a different purpose:

when first one daughter,
and then a second,

fell sick and sicker,
I should have been ready.

*

Water World

The dreamy images flashed
in quick succession, on and on,
recognizable but too fast
for reading the endless
pages of fine print.

Awake, but not, I thought
I’d caught myself dreaming,
was sure that this medical flipbook
must be rapid eye movement.
Drifting back to sleep, I told myself,
I must remember this.

My next thought, upon waking—
do other people see medical bills,
one after the other, after the other,
inscribed within their eyes
while they try to sleep,
Do they dream of static images,
of text and debts?

While the numbers
and the fine print spread
before me,
my daughter, still sick
in her bed, dreamed
in fear and senses,
of waking to the pressure
of water trapped within her walls,
of the sheetrock growing soft
and moist to the touch,
of hazy thoughts that she could rest
just a few minutes longer, that she had
more time to act, more time
before the liquid pocket burst
like a balloon all over her bed,
soaking her, as she recounted later,
in dirty wall water.

But she was wrong, time was short,
and the walls in her dream gave way
before she could get out of bed.
And the documents in mine kept scrolling.

*

In Anticipation of an Elegy

I began mourning
my trees last year
with the first news
of the tall building
to rise behind my yard.

Neighbors fought
for our yards, and won
a stay of execution—
I mean, a rejection
by the planning board

But it was only a matter
of time, and they did not
actually understand
that trees and plants
mean life in this city,

sustain birds and other
creatures but also humans
who cannot fly from yard
to yard in search of sun
but must make do

with the patch of earth
in our small backyards
and beg the planners
to vote as if our lives
depend on the trees.

*

Ann E. Wallace is Poet Laureate of Jersey City, New Jersey. Her collection Days of Grace and Silence: A Chronicle of COVID’s Long Haul is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2024. She is author of Counting by Sevens (Main Street Rag) and has published work in Huffington Post, Wordgathering, Gyroscope Review, Snapdragon and many other journals. You can follow her online at AnnWallacePhD.com and on Instagram @annwallace409.