Tag: Anna M. Evans

Two Poems by Anna M. Evans

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Piper Goes Blind Aged Eight

The new reality—our dog is blind—
has struck us like a rock thrown at a pane
of glass. We once saw clearly. Now we find
ourselves in darkness. We have got to train
her, fix the layout, keep things off the floor,
teach her words like left, right, up and down.
We miss the carefree pup she was before,
her countenance more bright-eyed smile than frown.
And yet, the vets have said that we will know
a different closeness with our little girl.
Her new reliance on us makes her curl
up closer, look much sadder when we go.
We’re patient with her, accept her need to fuss.
Our love is steadfast as her trust in us.

* 

Orion Blesses My Blind Dog

Now that my dog is blind, she often rises
unsteadily from the bed at four a.m.
and wanders, groggily crashing into things,
searching for an exit from the dark.

My job is to surface from my dream,
get up quickly, hustle into clothes,
and lead her, with my voice and finger snaps
down the stairs and out the kitchen door.

The night, then, is vast and otherworldly,
our footfalls crunching through the new-formed frost.
She scampers around, gratefully harvesting smells
as Orion looks on, clear and benevolent.

Afterward, she settles back in bed,
her little body warm against my own,
and I lie there, half-awake in the shadows,
dazzled by a love as pure as stars.

*

Anna M. Evans’ poems have appeared in the Harvard Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, American Arts Quarterly, and 32 Poems. She gained her MFA from Bennington College. Recipient of Fellowships from the MacDowell Artists’ Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and winner of the 2012 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers’ Choice Award, she currently teaches poetry at West Windsor Art Center and English at Rowan College at Burlington County. Her books include her latest chapbooks, The Quarantina Chronicles (Barefoot Muse Press, 2020) and The Unacknowledged Legislator (Empty Chair Press, 2019), along with Under Dark Waters: Surviving the Titanic (Able Muse Press, 2018), and her sonnet collection, Sisters & Courtesans (White Violet Press, 2014). Her new collection, States of Grace, is forthcoming from Able Muse Press in the fall of 2024. She is the Board President of the Poetry by the Sea Conference, an annual 4-day conference which takes place in Madison, CT, and the editor of the online poetry journal for women formalists, Mezzo Cammin.

Stereotyping at the Animal Shelter by Anna M. Evans

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Stereotyping at the Animal Shelter

Another cage, another pit bull mix,
another trusting face with wide set eyes.
These are the shelter dogs that no one picks,
because of what their heritage implies.
They’re an aggressive breed, detractors say,
owned by men who set up fights to bet.
A pit bull kills somebody every day.
Why would you want a pit bull for a pet?
And here is “Tyson,” aged nine, calm and sweet.
He’s good with cats, I read, and doesn’t bite.
I think of walking him along our street—
would people cross the road from me in fright?
He wags his tail. In our society
we don’t see past the things we’re told to see.

*

Anna M. Evans’ poems have appeared in the Harvard Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, American Arts Quarterly, and 32 Poems. She gained her MFA from Bennington College. Recipient of Fellowships from the MacDowell Artists’ Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and winner of the 2012 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers’ Choice Award, she currently teaches at West Windsor Art Center and Rowan College at Burlington County. Her books include her latest chapbooks, The Quarantina Chronicles (Barefoot Muse Press, 2020) and The Unacknowledged Legislator (Empty Chair Press, 2019), along with Under Dark Waters: Surviving the Titanic (Able Muse Press, 2018), and her sonnet collection, Sisters & Courtesans (White Violet Press, 2014).

Abecedarian for 2020 by Anna M. Evans

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Abecedarian for 2020

Apocalyptic years begin insidiously—your
best friend discovers she has cancer, and there’s news from
China about a mysterious, highly contagious
disease. One minute, Australia declares a state of
emergency, and you turn on the TV to see
fires raging. The next, there’s a
global pandemic, and everyone’s locked down at
home. You play cards and drink wine. It gets worse:
I can’t breathe, says George Floyd with that cop’s knee at his
jugular. Your best friend—her name was
Kim—dies. You turn 52 at a Black
Lives Matter protest. The internet jokes, Who had
Murder Hornets for May?
Not you, you’re just trying to keep track of the cancellations—
Olympics, Wimbledon, Lollapalooza, Broadway—and
pretending to cope. You teach classes online.
Quarantine follows quarantine and it’s suddenly fall.
Russia is again interfering in the presidential election;
Spotted Lantern Flies are swarming Philadelphia;
Trump claims credit for defeating Covid 19. The word
unprecedented is meta-commentary. Finally, you get the
virus, shut yourself in your bedroom watching MSNBC—
Wisconsin polls look good but Pennsylvania not so much—
experience tells you to trust nothing.
You write a poem, this poem. You hope Hurricane
Zeta will be the last disaster of 2020. It isn’t.

*

Anna M. Evans’ poems have appeared in the Harvard Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, American Arts Quarterly, and 32 Poems. She gained her MFA from Bennington College. Recipient of Fellowships from the MacDowell Artists’ Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and winner of the 2012 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers’ Choice Award, she currently teaches at West Windsor Art Center and Rowan College at Burlington County. Her books include her latest chapbooks, The Quarantina Chronicles (Barefoot Muse Press, 2020) and The Unacknowledged Legislator (Empty Chair Press, 2019), along with Under Dark Waters: Surviving the Titanic (Able Muse Press, 2018), and her sonnet collection, Sisters & Courtesans (White Violet Press, 2014).